


Cracking Ice

by Evalangui



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Bonding, F/M, Friendship, Gay For You, Gen, Hockey, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omegaverse, Social Commentary, Soul Bond, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, bisexuality AU, bisexuality as the norm AU, soulbond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-24 01:11:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 39
Words: 115,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6136259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evalangui/pseuds/Evalangui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Hockey is everything to them both... until they meet each other.</em>
</p><p>All Keenan Avali wants to do is play hockey. It doesn’t matter that he’s an alpha, he’s got no interest in dominating anywhere but on the ice. </p><p>When Cartwright Johnson joins the Flames he expects to play hard to compensate for being an omega who dared to pursue a professional hockey career, but after his last team traded him, he is not making the mistake of falling for a teammate ever again. He’s sure he’s got the control to keep his pants on and his heart closed... till he meets Keenan Avali. </p><p>An omega can't trust an alpha, much less one as hot as Avali, but nobody can fail to see they play together like they were made for it. For how long can they be the perfect teammates on ice when off it they can't stand to look at each other? </p><p>The more they want, the less they will admit, and, eventually, on the ice or off it, they're bound to crack. </p><p>An unconventional omegaverse novel. M/M, a little F/M on the side, too. Bisexual for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prejudice

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if there are any missing tags/triggers, did my best and the story is pretty mild for me (ie. it's A/B/O so consent is a little blurry for everyone in the midst of instincts) but I'm happy to add them.

&

**Keenan**

There was no sex in the world as good as the feeling of your puck hitting the back of the net. Keenan stood still for a moment, feeling the rush hit his bloodstream all at once, his heartbeat speeding and his cheeks flushing. There was simply nothing like being enveloped in the sweaty embrace of men whose bodies had worked so perfectly with yours that it was almost as if you were one person. And you had accomplished this without even touching.

Compared to that, there was little merit in fucking, even if the ladies smelt so much nicer. Keenan expected sex with an omega to be different, but he wasn't about to risk hockey for a chance at bonding and there wasn't really any other way for an alpha to find his way to an omega's bed. Bonding was a nice dream to have for retirement, but too dangerous for a young successful player. A lot of omegas found it too hard to be away from their alphas for the prolonged periods of time required of a hockey player. Keenan didn't want to do that to someone, keep something they needed from them, and he definitely didn't want to do that to someone he had a psychic bond with. So hockey won, like it usually did in any competition where Keenan was judge, and if it made him unusual and his mother fretted about him being alone still... well, it was worth it.

Still, he thought as the sticky sweet smell of caramel filled his nose as soon as he opened the door to get off the ice, that didn't mean he had any rational objections to having an omega on the team.

At least he hadn't until he had met Carry Johnson. Johnson didn't just smell like he had bathed in a bakery but the moment he had first caught sight of Keenan, the sweetness had turned bitter like burnt cake. He had pretended for the beta managers and teammates, said all the pleased-to-meet-yous and even talked about some of Keenan's moves on the ice with admiration that wasn't, Keenan thought, completely faked. But he couldn't act over his unease, and Keenan couldn't stop smelling it. He was an alpha and he was meant to keep omegas safe, the presence of an omega who was so profoundly uncomfortable with him was hard to take... and it was just hard to like someone who disliked you so much. That was rational enough for Keenan, even if he didn't really believe it was rational enough to bring up to the managers.

After weeks of playing together, Johnson seemed to have realised Keenan wasn't going to try and order him around or whatever other prejudices against alphas he was holding, but it still wasn't easy. He wished more than anything he didn't have to lose the rush of the goal to the wave of longing that hit him every time he was around Johnson. It was just pheromones, compatible pheromones, which Keenan had never experienced with a male omega in his _life,_ being as he was straight. But his own smell had to give him away to Johnson because the tension between them was unbearable even with his gaze firmly planted on the bench and Olly's grinning face. He imagined them as two predators carefully circling each other, not planning to attack but prepared for it nonetheless. Never being able to relax in the other’s presence.

It was exhausting.

Once the door to the rink closed, though, it was impossible to look away from the figure cutting across the ice almost faster than the eye could track. The sheer difficulty of moving so deftly at such high speed was compounded by the other nine moving bodies on the ice. It would have been impressive on an empty ice skating rink, but seeing Johnson speed between players left Keenan spellbound to the point where he sometimes forgot to follow the progress of the puck in favour of watching the left winger.

He watched Johnson literally twirl, then twist his body in the opposite direction with the same impulse and get around a defender twice his size, then make a perfect pass like he hadn't noticed the abrupt movement in front of his eyes at all. Patel fumbled the reception, --having just got free from his own defender-- and the shot hit the post, bouncing off harmlessly.

There were groans and barely muffled curses on the bench, but Keenan couldn't make a sound. He was biting his lip too hard to keep his fury at bay. He forced himself to take a deep breath, confused. Why was he so angry? _He_ had scored a goal, and they were still winning. There would be other chances, like there always were. But it had been such _perfect pass_ , it seemed sacrilegious Patel hadn't turned it into an equally perfect goal. Johnson wasn't taking it much better, he saw, his movements were stiff and stilted where they had been smooth and flawless before. Keenan should have been glad, on some level, but he felt even sorrier for Johnson than he did for Patel, who must have been feeling the failure more personally. It was utterly unfair that someone could do something so beautiful and have to see it destroyed.

&

**Cartwright**

He felt better as soon as the door closed behind Patel. The cold air felt almost like a separate world, a world in which none of the stupid rules and regulations applied. In hockey there was only one rule: **win**. Well, there might have been something about penalties in the book as well, but Carry was fast enough and small enough that most referees tended to decide he had startled his rivals into falling on their arses even when he _had_ got too close, not that he was trying to, sometimes he just forgot how slowly other people moved. And he needed the silver linings too much to even feel bad about a few penalties he had got off scot free. He was a small guy, for one thing, in a sport where it was common to try to bulk up as much as possible even if you were a giant so you could get on top of other players and force their play. Size wasn’t such a major factor, though, the real deal breaker was that Carry was an omega and according to popular belief, he should have been dreaming of babies, nurseries and worrying about colour schemes. When he had been drafted for a professional team, people had congratulated him on using classic omega stubbornness to accomplish a goal so different from parenthood as a contact sport. That was stupid enough, but it was only the beginning of thruway comments and off-colour jokes about omegas craving physical contact, about how the Titans had taken him in because they had an alpha captain Carry would instinctively do anything to please.

Still, Carry knew to count his blessings, he had been snapped up by the Trinity Titans, a medium league team, and it hadn’t been a publicity stunt like he had been warned might happen. The Titans wanted _him_ , Cartwright Johnson, the fastest forward in the minor league. By the end of training camp, he was called up to play with the team. It was possibly the fact that the Titans didn’t have any alphas in the managing team, even though alphas ‘naturally’ excelled at a sport as aggressive and domineering as hockey and tended to enjoy it enough to hang about as managers after their glory years were over. Betas forgot about omegas most of the time. Alphas were hard to overlook, but people who were raised to be quiet and unobtrusive weren’t a particular concern in a completive society if you were noseblind and couldn’t smell they were possessors of a very particular genetic variation. Carry liked betas just fine, sometimes he thought being surrounded by them was a bit like being alone, but that suited him fine. He didn’t want anybody’s protection or pity, and if the alternative was being alone, he’d take it.

Of course, that had only lasted so long. The Titans didn’t have any alphas on the managing team, but there were two alphas on the team. Unsurprisingly one of them was Captain Jack Laroux, a thirty five year old veteran who had such an air of self-confidence that Carry had barely kept himself from flinching the first time they had shook hands. Laroux was alright, though, maybe because he was so sure of himself he felt the least he could was be a real gentleman about the fact that he was a hockey superstar, adored by both his team and the public, happily bonded and with his third kid on the way. People who were that lucky didn’t have any bones to pick, Carry had guessed, and he’d never had any issues with Laroux, with whom he was not even a little compatible. Ali Pucio was a different deal, at twenty-four he was already one of the Titans starting defenders and he wasn’t shy about announcing his goals or ribbing his teammates. Carry hadn’t felt anything but the usual apprehension when they’d first met, but he hadn’t counted on how charming Ali could be, or on how lonely he himself was. Ali’s fellow defender Harry Villiers had been happy to watch them flirt over dinners with the team and videogames marathons and nobody else had said anything. There wasn’t anything to say, really. Ali was an alpha and Carry was an omega, but they were professionals and they were on hormone suppressants. They were just relieving tension, reminding themselves there could be something not because they wanted there to be, but because they wanted the option to be there when they decided they had had enough of hockey.

Except... except maybe it hadn’t been quite like that. Except Carry had been only nineteen and not living with his family for the first time in his life and he had never been in love before.

Pucio had only told Villiers, but Villiers had told someone else. Less than a week after he had lost his virginity, Carry had got the call about getting traded. His agent hadn’t said it in so many words, but the message was clear: no team wanted to bet on an omega that could get himself in trouble and out of playing any minute, much less one who would drag the team through the mud in the process.

He could play, so he could play. Why the fuck would it matter what he did off the ice? What he did _in bed_? It wasn’t like he...

Patel failed to deliver Carry’s next pass, and Carry had to grip his stick hard to keep himself from actually smashing it against the floor, or the defender. Or Patel’s head. This was only his third game with the Hell Flames and he had only scored once. He had to prove he was doing good work here, or they might decide to send him back to camp. Or trade him. He couldn’t handle another move, he had barely made it through this one.

Their line was called out and Avali’s sent in. Carry kept his gaze and attention firmly on the empty bench, where at least he could rest a little.

It took him a moment to process that Patel wasn’t cursing the referee for stopping the game.

Carry actually looked away from the game to stare at him. “What?”

“It was a beauty,” Patel commented ruefully. “But you are just so freaking fast, man. Sometimes it’s like you teleport or something.”

“Thanks,” Carry told him, feeling like he was letting him down by not teasing him somehow, but he didn’t know Patel that well and he didn’t feel like teasing about Patel wasting his shot. If he had seen it was beautiful, why hadn’t he used it to score? “Next time,” he added, trying to be friendly. Patel seemed to take his awkwardness in the spirit in which it was intended, and they both went back to watching the game, where the Liquids had just loss possession to, who else, Avali. Avali sped through the ice, a fast player in his own right even if he was not quite Carry himself, and the puck stuck to his stick as if magnetically attached. His handling was impressive even in practice, during a game it was like he didn’t even have to think about where the puck was for his stick to find it, for his body to follow, putting itself between the puck and his rivals as if out of some protective instinct. Some journalists joked about Avali’s protective posture, but when they called him a typically possessive alpha there was always some sign that they were joking and they thought it was kind of cool that Avali was using his instincts to win.

And win he did. He scored another goal, the last one of the game and the fourth the Liquids’ goalie let pass. Avali had scored twice, Sandiego and Kiau once each. And Carry none at all, of course neither had Patel or Bauer, both more experienced players. It was obvious their line wasn’t working, but the coaches hadn’t wanted to mess with the perfect formula that were Avali, Sandiego and Kiau and Carry knew he was in no positions to make demands of the Flames. He was new and he hadn’t earned it, but it was driving him crazy –it was torture to play a team sport with a line who couldn’t read you, worse than playing alone.

He closed his locker and threw his uniform onto the rapidly growing pile in the corner of the changing room while trying to come up with something on TV he really wanted to watch. But the only thing he wanted to watch had been what he had marathoned during the hellish month of trade negotiations. Sadly, fiction couldn’t keep up with the awfulness of Carry’s reality any more than he could. “You coming out?” Patel asked from where he was pushing something into his own locker.

Carry glanced his way, shook his head. “Nah, just," he waved his hand around. "Just tired, you know.”

Patel nodded. “You will get used to it soon,” he promised with a companionable smile. Carry shrugged, unable to come up with anything to say that wasn’t offensive or dismissive. He didn’t need to get used to hockey, he had taught himself to play till his body couldn’t hold him upright a long time ago and a month off hadn’t changed that. He had kept up with his training, in fact, he had been so antsy he had added reps to the point where he had ended up having to take a day off for fear that he had pulled a muscle on his right arm. Anyway, it wasn’t stamina that he was low on, but spirits.

He wanted to feel like he belonged on the ice, like he was meant to be there. He knew he was but when he wasn’t scoring... and surrounded by a team that wasn’t really his... it just got hard to remember, to believe. Patel wished him a good night and a couple other guys nodded, Thomas gently patting his shoulder as he walked by. Carry hated the gentleness, nobody had been gentle with him in the Titans even with two alphas on the roster. Did they forget he played the same contact sport where people ended up concussed and with broken bones all the time? Players had _died_ on the ice, why did Carry need gentle pats instead of the rough noggies and pushes everybody else got from teammates?

What he really needed was to be alone with a beer and a show and decompress.

 


	2. Linemates

&

**Keenan**

For a second Keenan thought he must have drunk too much and this was an alcohol fuelled nightmare, then he blinked and Coach Ramirez was still standing there looking expectantly at him. He nodded, gaze firmly planted on the wall opposite and nowhere near the cloud of lemon tinged sweetness that was his least favourite teammate. _Linemate_. At least for this practice. The coaches wanted to try them out together, as if it wasn’t obviously a bad idea, as if they hadn't asked Keenan if he could handle having an omega on the team before making an offer for Johnson.

Keenan, damn his pride and his principles both, had said yes. He didn't know why the kid was getting traded but someone that talented and that young shouldn't go to waste. He deserved a second chance.

He wasn't naïve, he knew a lot of alphas wouldn't give it to him. But, stupidly, it hadn’t occurred to him that the coaches would consider breaking their best line to give the new kid a chance to shine. It was criminal that Patel was wasting most of Johnson’s passes, sure, but that didn’t mean Keenan couldn't play in the same ice as Johnson and perform. He just couldn't deal with the distraction of Johnson's subtly shifting scent when he was trying to do his job and score. Like right now, Johnson's scent was going from unpleasantly surprised (acidic) to the cold determination that characterised him on the ice.

And then they were on the ice together. Keenan tried and failed to fake a right, Patel knew him too well to fall for it and took the puck from him. The guy was a sweetheart off the ice, but his bulk, more befitting a defender than a centre forward, kept Keenan straining to keep up even with speed on his side. Somehow, though, in the next thirty seconds, Johnson squirmed past Thomas and stole the puck from Bauer.

Keenan had imagined he'd lose track of the puck if he was focusing on Johnson, but his body had been trained to follow that little piece of plastic around as if his life depended on it for too long. In any case, for a lot of the game, _Johnson_ had the puck and he was usually passing it to Keenan. Easy and smooth and coming exactly from where Keenan was expecting it because in a matter of minutes Johnson had become the easiest linemate to track in the history of his career. It was uncanny. He scored for a second time. Thomas' assist, except it had been Johnson's play. He had met Keenan's eyes for a nanosecond and determined he was too well covered by the opposing defence to receive and moved on to their linemate without breaking stride. It had given Keenan a few seconds to get rid of Molierre and Schvills, just fast enough to get Thomas' pass and push the puck into the net. It had almost been too easy.

The coaches shouted something complimentary, words Keenan didn’t quite catch. Or need. They were on fire. There were no words for what was happening to him... to them. He had never played like this with anybody before, not even with the linemates he had played all the way through school.

Except there were some words: a lot of praise and then what they had all been thinking, what _Keenan_ knew was true: they had to take this to the next game.

He hesitated before leaving the ice to get changed. If it had been a good game he'd have said so but... how could he tell Johnson it was the best he had ever clicked with anybody on the ice in _his life_? Thomas knocked his gloved hand against his shoulder just hard enough to be felt through the padding. "Wow, man. What even!"

Keenan nodded and only then noticed he was grinning like a maniac. "Wow, indeed." He returned Thomas' friendly punch, then added, "Great pass." Then he braced himself to repeat the comment to Johnson, whose brief glances during the game had been the longest they had shared in the months of knowing each other. Before he had a chance, though, the rink's door clicked shut and he turned to see Johnson had walked out and closed it behind himself. The subtlest fuck you, but a clear one nonetheless.

Thomas raised his eyebrows at Keenan. "Bit of a temper, huh?"

Keenan shrugged. He didn't know what the guy's problem was, Keenan had just been taking a moment before thanking him as well, couldn’t he cut him a bit of a break before he started to slam doors and act like a total teenager?

 

&

**Cartwright**

It hadn’t been a fluke, they really played together like they were born to it. It wasn’t just that it took a player a certain speed to be able to handle Carry’s during a busy game, or even that Avali was an instinctive strategist but also a good improviser. Carry had played with men suited to his own abilities before, he had clicked with people before... He had even played with alphas, and he knew the way scent translated into being able to track each other on the ice more easily, which helped a lot when it came to passes, sure. But scent didn’t give you a precise location. That was all down to something else, and if it had a name, Carry hadn’t got far enough into his sports science to know it. But he didn’t just have a general idea about where Avali was, he felt almost like he could predict where Avali _would be_. Telepathy was bollocks, obviously, even bonded partners only had empathy but... Carry knew they would win the moment Avali had won the face off and slid the puck over to him without even looking. He made a point of skating around the Desert Snakes' winger before returning it just as Avali reached a perfect angle to shoot from. Avali caught it and turned, slotting it into the goal like it was nothing, like he hadn't even _seen_ the Desert defense. The crown roared and Carry felt like his heart would explode in his chest. He loved playing home ice.

The next goal came equally easy, only Avali couldn't shoot so he sent it back to Thomas, who pretended to aim for goal and slid it smoothly to Carry instead. Carry didn't even remember aiming, it was like his arms had planned and executed the play without consulting his brain. He loved that feeling, being just a body, perfectly trained for a task he could replicate perfectly again and again.

He took the time to skate to Thomas and give him a solid pat on the back in thanks. As he skated pass Avali the thought crossed his mind to touch him as well, but it quickly passed and the game was on again.

They had destroyed the Deserts. They weren't a great team to start with, but, all loyalty aside, neither were the Flames. They weren't mean to dominate so thoroughly when playing another team in the league. Even once their line went to sit out the next shift, the Flames were... well, on fire. When the game was over Carry was sure he was only standing because he was too stiff to bend his limbs. Well, that and the celebratory group hug made it even more hazardous to let gravity win the eternal fight.

He leaned into his new team, enjoying their warmth, and even, perversely, the sweaty mass of bodies. It was ridiculous but he’d missed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm writing this as a I go, although I already have 24k and I thought it was safe enough to share. Love all criticism/fb!


	3. Warmer

 

&

**Keenan**

Keenan shrugged. He would probably have been pissed if someone had singled him out when handing out praise. Or not handing out praise, really. "I wouldn't know, I haven't exchanged a single word with him."

"What? Seriously?" Sven's English sounded strangely young when he was annoyed, like he had never learned how adults fought in the language. It wasn't that strange, his wife was Swedish and it didn't look like they argued much anyway. "He's pretty shy, but... I don’t think it’s the alpha thing, he’s been fine with me."

"What?” Keenan exclaimed. “No! Of course not! I just... he keeps his distance."

"So you have tried to talk to him and he's refused to answer?" Sven asked, clearly skeptical.

"Well, no... he didn't seem like he wanted me to."

"Avali, you didn't get that A for your goals. You are a cool dude. Could you possibly act like it around this guy you like?"

"What?" Keenan asked, too loud, he knew. "Because he's an omega I have to have the hots for him? I'm _straight_."

Sven was an alpha himself, so it was a pretty stupid thing to say. Alphas weren’t attracted to all omegas and Sven, --even eight years bonded—knew it perfectly well. But, like most people, Sven didn’t take Keenan’s identity seriously. "Great," Sven said, actually clapped his hands together. "Then you have no reason to treat him differently."

"No," Keenan said, but didn't try to argue that he hadn't. It hadn't been his brightest move to assume leaving his omega teammate alone would make him feel safer. He wasn’t too much of an alpha to admit he’d made a mistake. He was a professional player, he knew it took hard work to improve and he wasn’t afraid to put in the time.

"I'm glad to hear," Sven replied smugly. "You better hurry up and shower or he'll leave us to celebrate alone again."

&

"Johnson," he said. In the crowded changing room Johnson was always the first to leave so he couldn't wait till later. The guys glance his way since he was talking from halfway across the room. He hadn't felt he could walk any closer without Johnson acknowledging him, at least. Alphas weren't meant to touch omegas uninvited, they weren't even supposed to look like they might. But he could have stood closer without breaking protocol... if he hadn't been feeling so self-conscious around Johnson since he had first scented him and got a shock of... well, an emotion, something too strong to feel for a teammate. Johnson looked up at him, eyes clear as blown glass and just as cutting, his dark eyelashes making them seem even lighter.

"Good game," Keenan said clumsily. Johnson kept staring till the door closed behind someone and he seemed to be forcefully awaken from his trance. "Same," was all he said, so short Keenan couldn't even describe his tone. And then Thomas dropped next to him on the bench like it was nothing, Johnson turned to him, clearly startled and Keenan was equally surprised even though Thomas was half undressed and clearly couldn't have approached that stealthily. "Are you guys for real? _Good game? Same?_ That was fucking amazing!" He shook his head, then put his massive paw on Johnson and shook him as well. Johnson was a great player but he must have been literally half of Thomas' weight so he looked like a doll in the hands of an excitable child. That is, he did till he turned around and gave Thomas a serious shove. "Quit it, I don't want to lose any more teeth," this was gruff but not mean and the hit obviously hadn't hurt through the pads because Thomas ribbed.

"Oh, you mean someone hit someone as pretty as you in the face?"

Johnson turned to him and opened his mouth, signalling to the right side before closing it to explain, "Half of that row it's porcelain!"

"So you still need to brush them," Keenan heard himself say and Johnson gave him such a weird look he couldn’t tell which of them had made Thomas snort with laughter.

"What the hell?" Johnson asked. "You still need to clean fakes, it's not like you stop eating!"

Keenan shrugged, hoping to avoid saying something else stupid.

"Now I'm really hoping you don't have any," Johnson added, still looking horrified. So much so that it made Keenan crack a smile.

"He does!" Bauer chipped in from behind him.

"Just a molar," Keenan said.

"Yes," Thomas agreed, dropping his pads. "But do you brush it?"

Keenan rolled his eyes and stepped away, pulling his jersey over his head as he went. "It's in the middle of my mouth, what do you think? He offered, not bothering in pushing his sarcastic tone much because of how obvious it was. Pulling his pads and undershirt off was a mistake, though, because it got the whistling started.

"You are _purple_ , man," Schvill commented from besides him on the bench farthest from Johnson. He might have needed to change in the same space with an omega but he was willing to find into the most comfortable spot for that. Even so, he could feel Johnson's alarm and knew he must have looked.

He waved off the comment and the unspoken concern both. "I bruise easy. Too much Caucasian," he explained. It was more like too many hockey accidents; he’d missed going to the beach last summer because of his broken arm and on skin meant to be exposed regularly to the sun like his, it didn’t look so great. He was still darker than Thomas, whose hair was white blond and his eyelids looked transparent, and who was laughing uproariously at this. "If that's what you have to tell yourself..."

"Oh, you shouldn't tease him about his delicate skin," Johnson said then, and Avali thought he was perfectly in earnest till he turned and saw the wicked curve of his reddened lips. Did he bit on them? “You might bruise his _ego_.”

The rest of the guys got it about then, too, because after a shocked silence -Johnson never joked in the locker room-- laughter erupted throughout the room. Johnson's smile turned pleased, and Keenan had to turn his face to hide his own.

 

&

**Cartwright**

It was a heady feeling to have the guys laugh with him so when Thomas raised his eyebrows and dared him, “Running away?” he blinked in a way he knew made his eyes look huge and asked in the most innocent voice he could muster, “Me?”

Schvills snorted water out of his nose at that and he didn’t even feel uncomfortable about the curious glance Avali slanted his way.

He should have been more careful with how much he drank, though, because he hadn’t intended to get as friendly with Thomas’ shoulder as he was two hours later. He apologized and Thomas laughed at him. “You have said sorry like ten times already! Forget it, it’s not like I can feel even feel you, you are like a feather.”

He was used to being teased about being small, not that 5.8 was small in the real world, just in hockey. He had stopped assuming guys meant anything by it a long time ago, when a coach had sat him down and explained that being small and fast was _his_ trademark and although he should definitely eat to bulk up, he didn’t need to worry about that.

So he slumped then, listening to familiar conversations in new voices, losing track of one when a word or name make his attention wander to another.

There was one thing about being drunk he liked, though: it made the world fuzzy enough that he wasn’t unconsciously tracking Avali among the group.

It was only when a glass of water was deposited in front of him and he looked up into Avali’s dark eyes that he became aware that he was there at all. He didn’t look away fast enough and then he couldn’t.

“Drink this,” Avali said and Carry’s hand was closing around the glass without a single thought. The cold water seemed to wake him up a little, but Avali was already leaving, not giving Carry a chance to decide how he felt about it before there was nothing to do about it anyway.

Later, Bauer and Thomas walked him up to his hotel room. They’d got him some chicken wings but he still felt pretty droopy. It was the first time he had allowed himself to drink since the trade talk had begun and he had taken a bottle of sake and drank till he had passed out. Alone and with nobody expecting him anywhere in the morning.

He hadn’t been trying to die, he had just stopped trying not to. And in the morning with the sunlight pouring over his eyes like acid… the future hadn’t seemed any better but he had discovered that he was still more afraid of not having one.

But this time was different. He was happy and he wasn’t alone, even if he was lonely as hell and he hadn’t got to rest his hangover. Instead he got a buck-load of teasing.

It hurt to be around people and not just because their voices felt like nails digging into his eardrums, but… it was the pain of learning to walk after breaking his leg when he was eight. He had needed to move again, and he needed this, too.

He didn’t need them. He could do with anybody, really, but they were his team now and they were welcoming him. It was not going to be a friendship for the legends, and it needn’t be. It was enough that they worked on the ice, and then could extend that a little to talking about hockey and sharing and alcohol and just the company of someone familiar during trips. It wasn’t little, not to be always alone, even if that made the loneliness all the worse.

He could cope with the loneliness; he didn’t really have a choice. And as long as he kept his distance from Avali, he could cope with the company, too.


	4. The kiss

&

**Keenan**

On the ice, Keenan found he could ease into talking to Johnson. First they had a perfect conversation without words and then once they got to the bench, Thomas started them off complimenting one or the other and then it was natural enough to respond in kind.

Except then they couldn't keep it up outside, not unless Thomas was feeling particularly long-suffering and was willing to sit between them in a restaurant or bar. Keenan could be around Johnson and the team as long as they didn't interact directly for prolonged periods of time, periods of time beyond a minute. Anything more and he became an awkward mess. No that Johnson's own monosyllabic responses and blanks face helped matters. On the ice he was caramel ice cream, off the ice he thawed a little, but if Keenan ever looked at him, he was a fucking _iceberg_. Like he thought any overture that wasn't clearly about hockey would be taken as... it made one wonder what had happened to him at his old team. Not that they all didn't wonder anyway,  they were just too polite to even hint about it to Johnson himself --even after he relaxed enough around them to go out for the occasional drink.

Still, it worked well enough. Until it didn't. From one day to the next their passes stopped connecting, not just with each other but with Thomas as well. But Thomas was happy to shout at either of them with corrections, and once someone told you your passes were too curvy it was fairly easy to focus and fix it. Johnson didn't shout at Keenan, though, and if he didn't do it, Keenan could hardly do it himself without feeling like a privileged alpha asshole. So their passes didn't get fixed.

They didn't talk about it outside practice, not even with Thomas. Keenan didn't see how anything had changed, so how he could do anything to change things back?

And then, stupidly, they took the whole mess to a game and lost. Keenan already felt like shit, and when Sven kept them back after practice the following day, he knew he deserved it. Thomas stayed, too, although Keenan couldn't say whether that was actually good because the first thing Sven noticed was that his centre and his left-winger weren't talking to each other directly.

Sven didn't mince words, he turned to Thomas and demanded, "Is it always like this?"

Thomas shrugged. "Well, you know..." He wasn't throwing them under the bus, but he didn't want to lie to his captain either, which Keenan could get. "We manage."

"You don't manage," Sven argued, "that's why we are here!"

He tilted his head at Johnson and they went to talk by the benches, too quiet to hear from the ice but not far enough that the sudden acidic turn of Johnson's scent wasn't obvious to Keenan anyway. Or the way it suddenly turned chilly when Johnson nodded at Sven and turned towards the ice.

"I think we need to practice one on one, Avali," Johnson declared, meeting his eyes like it was nothing. Keenan swallowed hard, but he made himself nod. He didn't think Johnson had ever said his name before. He couldn't quite explain why it should have mattered.

He didn't expect the way Johnson met his gaze again once they were closer to the goal, either, and couldn't keep his eyes from skittering away. He shoved his helmed on and wished for a visor. Why had he stopped playing rugby, again?

Johnson seemed like an entirely new person. He was being professional, Keenan guessed, but he'd never seen him be this friendly with the guys he clearly liked, like Thomas. "If you take goal for a while," he suggested, "I'll shoot. We can switch up later."

It was a pretty solid idea, Keenan realised as he got in goal; it would keep them physically far away from each other while still practicing together. But it wasn't enough, Johnson's scent and the fear of what his own might reveal left him out of sorts. With someone else, he could have faked it, but Johnson was one of the best players in the team, had the makings of a star in the _league_.

He scored on Keenan thrice in a row like it was nothing. He didn't know what was wrong with him: he wasn't a good goalie, too skittish for it, but he'd never been _bad_ , and Johnson hadn't even been trying hard. Johnson didn't aim for a fourth, instead skating over so fast a cloud of icey dust followed in his wake.

" _What are you doing_?" he asked, spitting it out like he'd spit his mouth protector.

"I...I'm not good at goal," Keenan said uncertainly. And why should he feel so uncertain in front of an omega? Wasn't that the opposite of what being an alpha meant?

Johnson's incredulity could have wiped out several minor experiences. "You are not..." He trailed off, apparently unable to continue, then exhaled loudly and gave into his fury. "What is your _deal_? Did you just suddenly remember I'm an omega after four perfect games?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"What...?" Are you seriously going to try to tell me you don't care? Like I don't know you think I shouldn't play?"

"I don't think that!" Keenan snapped back, for the first time feeling on firmer ice. "Just because you have had some issues with alphas, it doesn't mean..."

"What would you know about my issues with alphas?" Johnson interrupted, breaking about half the protocol with one sentence.

"Anybody can tell you have issues with alphas," Keenan replied, doing his best not to let Johnson's emotions pull him along into a meltdown.

"How do you know I don't have issues with _you_?"

"With me? I have barely looked at you outside the ice!"

"And you think that's a _good thing_?"

Keenan opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Any time I as much as _glance_ your way you... your scent goes all awful," he explained haltingly, "I thought you'd want me to leave you alone. And it's protocol."

Johnson exhaled shakily. "I wish you _could_ leave me alone," he said with raw honesty. His voice sounded like glass, and Keenan almost stumbled in place, the instinct to give him space so overpowering he forgot for a moment that he was still inside the netted goal area.

And then Johnson, with his usual speed, skated closer and Keenan backed himself into the rink wall behind him, almost falling when the back of his skates tangled with the net. It was no use, Johnson took advantage of his shock and took hold of his undone strap, forcing his head down enough to touch his cheek with his lips. It was over in a second, but it sent a shockwave of longing so strong through him that he thought he wouldn't be able to keep from reaching back.

And then Johnson was skating back to pick up his discarded stick and rational thought returned. Thoughts that weren't about the softness of his lips, the way his scent had seemed to grow more intense when he'd been pressed up close...

A family kiss. An omega telling an alpha they were family and there was no need for the most formal of protocolary expectations. The kind of kiss you gave your uncles and aunts and maybe cousins if you were far apart in age or you weren't compatible at all.

He met Johnson's clear blue gaze across the ice. The omega seemed indifferent to what he had just done, smelling of ice with barely an undertone of his sweetness. But it was an act, Keenan understood now. He was keeping back his real feelings. He had learned to control his scent to some extent, probably to be able to play on the ice with the many alphas in the league. Because Keenan knew one thing for sure: what he had felt couldn't be on him alone. They were compatible. And there was no way Johnson had missed it, or that he was capable of hiding it if he'd just discovered it: he had known. And he had done it anyway.

&

Johnson's completely unprotocolary kiss had done something. The almost physical barrier Keenan had felt between them was gone. It made sharing space with him both easier and harder, though, because it also meant that the only thing keeping Keenan from touching Johnson now were civility and his attachment to his limbs. But Johnson was helpful in that regard, in the sense that outside the ice he was still cold as all hell and as closed up to anything Keenan had to say as he had always been.

 

&

**Carry**

In retrospect the kiss was a mistake. At the time it had seemed like he couldn’t take it a second longer, that putting up with Avali’s condescending alpha hand-offs and no eye contact routine would literally make his head explode. A kiss on the cheek was standard, what you gave relatives in greeting and a standard way of letting an alpha acquaintance know you considered as close as family and they could relax the protocol.

But it wasn't just that. It had an effect on an alpha's instinctive deference for an omega's personal space. It made casual touching okay. Which was why you weren’t meant to do it to someone you were compatible with, not until the late stages of courting.

It was explicit permission to touch you and often protocol was the only thing _keeping_ the interactions between an alpha and an omega chaste.

It wasn’t a problem here, of course. Avali wasn’t going to do anything.

The problem was that touching him had made Carry realised something he would rather never had known: they weren’t compatible, they were a one true pair. Perfect compatibility, or thereabouts, and according to myth it lead to instantaneous and perfect happiness for ever and ever. Which was obviously bullshit, it was just hormones, after all. And if Carry had doubted it, he now had the experience of how much Keenan Avali irritated him to support his claim.

What were the odds anyway? Carry wasn’t even attracted to the purported fifth of the alphas he met, maybe one of out of ten males, a single woman that he could remember and that didn’t guarantee they were compatible, just made it very likely.

And one true pairs were the stuff of legends. For a long time, while humans lived in settled communities and didn’t travel much, they had been more legend than anything. But in modern times people met true pairs, some alpha had gone on TV and become famous because he had met three of his. The guy was an investor who travelled the continents weekly, though, and Carry had noticed that it hadn’t been till the third person that he’d got bonded. But still, if you lived in a city, you most likely knew a couple who were a true pair, maybe even more than one.

Carry had never even cared about the whole one true pair thing, but of course he had received training in recognizing the signs like all omegas did. Back then he had thought it an even bigger waste of time that the rest of the training. If it was really such a world changing experience to meet someone with whom you were a 100% compatible, wouldn’t you _notice without training_?

Except apparently not. Maybe that was why the signs were necessary, because if you didn’t spot them and you didn’t touch the alpha, which with protocol in the way an omega was highly unlikely to do... If Carry had had an inkling it was anything beyond attraction... touching Avali had felt like being electrocuted by an orgasm. He was only grateful that he hadn’t actually reached completion, but he had pulled back from that single peck feeling dazed and started shouted at Avali to cover up the almost overwhelming arousal.

“There!” He spat at the rapidly blushing cheeks of his centre forward, who looked like he'd been hit hard over the head and smelt like he'd got a snog instead of a chaste brush of Carry's lips. He was...

There was no way he could meet his eyes, maybe not ever again buy he couldn't stop talking because staying angry was the only he only thing keeping his own arousal at bay. “Now we are family and you can stop treating me like I’m made of fucking glass!”

He’d turned on his heels and stormed off in lieu of simply fleeing, slamming the rink door for good measure. He hoped none of his other teammates had noticed, or he was going to get a reputation as a hysterical omega.

&

Stupidly, it had helped. He didn't know if it was because the tension couldn't possibly get any worse and they'd both just decided to give in, or if the implicit admission of what was between them had loosened the rope they kept pulling on. He still knew where Avali was in every square centimetre of ice and land, but it was a secondary awareness, not something he was concerned about. He didn't know why people didn't always do it this way: accept they were attracted to someone and then move on with their lives. It wasn't like you had to act on attraction, was it?


	5. Chapter 5

**&**

**Keenan**

 

It wasn’t like Keenan had never got a kiss from a new omega in the family. He couldn’t even say they had all been bonded; his aunt’s younger sister had spent the Return at Keenan’s mother’s place and, after manoeuvring awkwardly around the crowded room, she had taken him by the shoulder and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. Keenan had been able to give a grateful smile in return and move, no longer worried about brushing by her while moving chairs around and breaking protocol.

She had smelled nice, like mint and flowers. And the only reason he remembered was that she’d shared her gum with him. She had been beautiful, the type of woman Keenan would have had eyes for even if she had been a beta, but he hadn’t... it hadn’t done anything for him. Which was fine, obviously, she was an omega but they weren’t compatible, it was to be expected.

But he hadn’t expected to be compatible with someone he couldn’t feel attracted to. How could his body react to something his mind rejected? How could a man touching him casually and briefly have left him hard as drills? Would any compatible omegas touch make him feel like this? Would it be even more intense if it was a woman? The thought filled him with longing, as irrepressible as the need for food or drink. He wanted that. It had only been a second but the sensation echoed through his nerve endings like a sweet aftertaste of intense pleasure. And then, unbidden, came the thought... What would it be like to touch Johnson for longer?

He shoved the thought away, feeling burned by it.

It was obviously the intense experience of touching a compatible omega for the first time, even one with whom he couldn't be very compatible, considering his own preferences and Johnson’s open hatred of him.

If Johnson had imagined naming him family would help Keenan’s level of comfort around him, he couldn’t predict for shit. It did have the unintended effect of making him so aware of Johnson in any place that he couldn’t have missed a pass from him if he had tried, or ignored a single syllable out of his mouth. In between staring at Johnson’s lips like a fool he did manage to follow most of what he was saying, and he was so annoyed at him for what he had done that it wasn’t hard to snap back whatever came to mind. If Johnson was so irritated by protocol then Keenan would gladly oblige and tell him straight when he was being a fool.

They weren’t the most rational or constructive of conversations, but they were talking, Keenan had to give him that. He gritted his teeth. Then said slowly, "It wasn't Patel's fault."

Johnson snorted, rolling his eyes at him. "You think he can't take a little criticism?"

"That defender is insane, and that was totally a foul, anyway, so..."

Johnson, who bizarrely seemed way more comfortable now, interrupted him casually, "It might have been, but Patel didn't fake that pass properly. If he had..."

"That doesn't mean he deserves to be fouled, does it?"

Johnson looked like he was considering it. "He could have avoided it," was all he said.

Keenan made himself swallow his anger. He wasn't going to hit Johnson. Although he had to admit it was a relief to find his true feelings remained under the uncomfortable part of him that kept track of any skin Johnson left exposed to his eyes.

 

&

**Cartwright**

Somehow, he'd assumed the team knew to keep the press away from him. In fact, anybody who had ever seen his press should have known it never ended well, but somebody had got optimistic after their victory against the Rippling Waves. Carry found himself in an office with a guy who must have pretended well enough for management but who wasn't bothering to hide his sharp teeth from Carry. Predators had always found him irresistible, like they were certain Carry was too weak to ever denounce them for what they were. And, sadly, telling the truth tended to work so rarely that Carry had learned to only go to management with the serious offenses and let the little digs and the general disrespect pass him by as if he hadn't noticed.

He was very good at indifference by now, but he still froze, staring at the reporter. The guy looked mildly interested, not at all like he understood how inappropriate his question was. But what else was new? "No," he told him finally.

"Really?" The man insisted, "because your instincts are supposed to make you want to please alphas, right?"

Carry swallowed, keeping up a facade so dispassionate not even an alpha could have read him. "I guess my instincts aren't working, then. Binker is a great player and great captain, and I work hard to keep up with him, but I'm not focused on him. My goal is winning, like everybody else's on the team."

He thought that sounded alright, not that the guy couldn't quote him out of context if he liked --it wouldn't be the first time--, but at least he was making sense without sounding too rehearsed.

"Oh, but Binker's bonded, isn't he?" the reported pressed. "What about Avali?"

Carry blinked at him, giving himself a moment. He had known he'd be asked about Avali, yes, from the first and definitely after they'd become linemates. And if he could tell the truth, he could have explained to the wanker trying to catch him out that not did his instincts not make him want kowtow to Avali but he was often tempted to do things to get the opposite of his approval. Not that they weren't getting on. They were and that's how their game had become more or less a reliable tool for the team.  "What about Avali?" he echoed mildly.

"He's been your centre for a couple games and you guys have been playing amazing together. Better than you've ever played with anybody else."  
Oh, great, the arsehole had been paying attention.

"We lost as many games as we won," he pointed out reasonably.

"Not after today," Mr Arsehole assured him with a smirk. "Does that mean you and Avali have kissed and made up?"

It was such a childish dig, Carry almost laughed in his face. Instead he glanced to the side, hoping he looked thoughtful. "I'm glad you see us improving, obviously it takes a while to get used to a new line, and it's all down to practice."

Great, he thought, now he sounded like a PR bite.

"So now you work well together?"

Carry shrugged. "You have seen the results," he said noncommittally.

That was a little less bland, he thought, but not revealing. And then the article came out.

  
&

**A Partnership On Fire**

**–The Hell Flames's perfect formula: Alpha + Omega–**

**By Orson Klaus.**

As Cartwright Johnson, of the industrialist family and the Hell Flames’s newest addition, puts it himself: one only has to look at the results they have achieved in such a short period of time to see the connection between the rookie omega and his more experienced alpha teammate, Keenan Avali (centre forward).

Fans were surprised to see their old favourite had switched lines, but they were not disappointed when on their first game together Avali and Johnson lit up the ice with their chemistry. Two goals each off each others' assists, and even one for their linemate. Of course, as it is only to be expected from an alpha/omega partnership, they have had their ups and downs since then, but today they have broken the tie with a spectacular performance against the Rippling Waves. By no means a weak team, they could do nothing against the combination of Avali's strength and Johnson's speed and the way their team followed their lead with a determination and stamina one would expect only in the last stages of a tournament.

Of course, like all heat, a partnership this hot might quickly dissipate if not properly harnessed. Will the Flames’s management be able to use these two fantastic players to make it to the finals, or will they let them burn themselves out?


	6. It begins

&

 **Keenan**  
  
He was sorry to have read it. But that didn't mean he wanted to take it back: he needed to know. The interview hadn't even been about them, but about the game with the Ripplings, but that reporter --and Keenan felt using the term was generous of him-- had twisted it all to make it seem like the victory had been solely Keenan's and Johnson's. It was insulting all around but then the guy had gone on to insist that it was due to _chemistry_. He walked up to coach and asked to be allowed to miss warm up to talk to Johnson. He didn't show him the article, but coach must have known about it because he gave in without a single question. "You have twenty minutes."

Johnson was already half out of his clothes by the time Keenan got to the changing room –chest bare and the curve of his back disappearing into a pair of tight jeans that were almost worse than boxers even as they covered him up—so Keenan was forced to keep his gaze firmly on the wall while he asked to speak to him.

"Sure, after..."

"Now," Keenan interrupted. "I cleared it with coach. We have twenty minutes."

Johnson didn't reply and Keenan instinctively turned towards him, forgetting he wasn't fully dressed. It wasn’t too bad, really; Johnson was wearing his uniform trousers and a white undershirt, hardly pornographic, but Keenan's eyes still lingered too long on his nipples through the fine cloth. He hastily raised his eyes to Johnson’s, who was frowning but didn’t seem bothered by the scrutiny. "What's this about?"

"There was an article..."

Johnson huffed in annoyance and Keenan’s eyes dropped to his throat as he swallowed like he was magnetized. "Yes,” his teammate said gruffly, “they decided I should do an interview for some reason. It's like they never read my press before!"

"What do you mean?" Keenan asked, forgetting about moving somewhere more private and even about Johnson’s state of dishabille, he even managed to raised his eyes to Johnson’s face and keep them there. Nobody was sitting next to Johnson and when Santiago walked in –back from the physio he was on for his elbow— he quickly found a seat on the other side of the room where Bauer and Molierre were discussing something excitedly.

"They always twist things so everything is about being an omega," Johnson explained with a shrug, and went right back to putting on his pads.

For a second, Keenan was annoyed, but the curve of Johnson's spine... it wasn't that he was ignoring Keenan. He didn't want to look at him. "But that's crazy, you are a professional hockey player, and they are sport journalists, why would they ask about being an omega?"

Johnson shrugged again. "Because that's all I am to them."

"But how can they not have seen what you did out there?" Keenan insisted, he had to; they couldn’t just ignore it. It had been… Back in school his teacher had tried to make him look at classical paintings and see the beauty, even though the angles were wrong and the necks too long and most of them just _weren’t_ beautiful. But then Mr Evans had made them look at how they’d been made, at how the curve of an ankle was absolutely perfect, the arch so delicate and tridimensional that you could almost touch it… And it wasn’t like Keenan wanted to hang them on his walls or anything –he was all abstract art since his parents would have freaked if he’d tried to paper his apartment with movie posters— but he could see it, for a moment. And it was the same with hockey, even people who didn’t particularly like it could see the beauty of a pass sometimes, it’d catch them by surprised and they’d go ‘huh, so _that’s_ why’ and then they forgot again. Anybody could have seen Johnson’s playing was beautiful, never mind the goals and the assists. But if you loved hockey, if you saw the beauty in it, you couldn’t stop seeing it, it was there all the time, and when a play went wrong it broke. And when someone played like Johnson had been playing, it was like that point where a symphony crested and you felt your chest tighten with it, almost like you couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t believe a professional sports journalist could miss it, there was just no way.

"They saw it," Johnson said, unrolling his high socks. His feet were strong, callused, marked up by heavy use already. They looked real, unlike the soft curves of his face that made him look younger than he was and more innocent even as he spoke of how people were missing everything he was trying to do with his life because of a single accident of fate. "They just prefer to think it's unresolved sexual tension poured into hockey instead of hard work paying off. Or maybe magical sex pheromones sell better than effort."

"But they can't just write whatever they want," Keenan insisted, Johnson's obvious resignation was only making him angrier. "They have to follow some... some professional guidelines!"

Johnson snorted at that and looked up at Keenan, his eyes looked calm, way calmer than he could possibly feel under the circumstances. Keenan wished he wouldn’t close up so much he smelt of nothing, but that he was bothering meant there was no way it was true. When he was relaxed, Johnson’s scent was sweet as candy and _very_ noticeable. "Sure, they do, so they learn how to play it so they never quite cross the line, but get close enough that anybody can figure out what they are saying. It's not libel if the reader makes the connection."

Keenan wasn't going to give it up that easily, though. After practice –pretty good, but not their best—, he asked coach and got the number of the right PR person. He waited till he was home to call them, the last thing he wanted was somebody to overhear him in the train.                    

They already knew what he wanted. "You are calling about that chemistry article?"

"Um, yes," he said, he’d never had reason to call PR and he felt bad about giving them extra work.

"I've looked at it, I thought he might have fucked up with something, but other than not quoting Johnson directly at all, he was following the rules."

"What? But he clearly implied we are..."

"Yes," they interrupted. "He did, but he didn't _say it_ , he spoke about your on ice performance with very strange terms, but he didn't say anything about your personal relationships."

"Are you seriously telling me that he can get away with this?"

"Have you heard of the freedom of the press, Avali?" They asked patiently. "It's not a big deal. He implied there might be something romantic between you and Johnson, so what? Everybody is thinking it anyway."

"What?" Keenan blurted out, almost dropping the phone and slamming his hip against his bureau as he walked back towards the bedroom door for the fiftieth time –it wasn’t a conversation he could have still.

"You play on the same line, you play _really well_ on the same line. People talk. You signed up to be on the public eye when you joined the Flames, and so did Johnson."

"I'm pretty sure _you_ signed up to help protect us!"

"Yes, and I am. If we make a big deal out of this, it'll only seem like we have something to hide. It's just a stupid rumour, let it go. If they ever cross the line, we'll be ready with a lawsuit."

Keenan had to bite his lip not to shout at them, then simply hung up. It was rude, but it was better than shouting.

                                                                                                                

&

**Cartwright**

He could feel the heat coming on first thing in the morning. The beginning was actually pleasant, like waking up under soft sunlight, muscles relaxed, mind quiet. He was aroused, of course, but it was nothing urgent yet, something he could take or leave, and when he did take himself in hand he could go slow, tease himself till he was wet enough for the friction not to chafe. It was only when he came, —a lingering punch of electricity in the middle of the decadent pleasure he’d been enjoying— that he realized what it meant.

He raised his head to look down at the mess he’d made of the bed, then let it thump back down. “Fuck.”

It wasn’t like Carry never woke up hard and welcomed the day with a little death, but heat felt different, buzzing under his skin and impossible to ignore even after coming. He didn’t need to come, his body insisted, he needed _an alpha_. His body didn’t give a fuck that Carry wanted a hockey career, or independence enough to choose what to wear and eat and where to live.

They were staying at a hotel for the whole weekend before the Protectors game. A game Carry was now bound to miss for ‘medical’ leave. It cost him to fight nature, and he wasn’t going to be physically fit for hockey unless his heat breezed by.

An omega wasn’t meant to go through heat alone, back in the times of cavemen heat scent would have announced to any compatibles alphas in the vicinity the omega was available, and soon whoever won the fight that usually ensued would get to mate and bond the omega, who would have someone for their heats for the rest of their lives. Of course, that and protection was pretty much all they got out of it since bonding meant an alpha could order them to do pretty much anything they liked.

In the future, you got suppressants. Compulsory if your first heat hit when you were fifteen and ‘psychologically unready for intimacy’. Only when he had been prescribed the suppressants his doctor had meant for him to take them only until he was eighteen and old enough for sex. At eighteen, though, Carry had been about to begin his career and he had refused to stop taking them, going as far as switching doctors to get his way. It had been worth it when he had been picked to play professionally and team doctors certainly understood the need to push Carry’s body to give all it had, be it on the ice or off it. They made him take breaks from them during the off season, which he had done mostly because he knew they’d lose effectivity otherwise.

He didn’t really know if his heats were worse than other people’s, or he was just unused to them. Or maybe the suppressants were making them worse, just like his GP had warned him. Not that it mattered, if he stopped taking the suppressants during the season, his body would certainly wake up with a fury and send him into frequent heats to make up for all the ones he had missed or got in diminished form.

Maybe it had happened anyway. Or maybe it was his fault, maybe he shouldn’t have touched an alpha he was compatible with. Want as he might, he couldn’t convince himself it was a coincidence this was happening now. The timing wasn’t suspicious, it was... it didn’t matter, anyway. He had dealt with heats during the summer and he could deal with it now.

He called room service for supplies, not bothering to specify a beta servant. Alpha servants were extremely rare and if there was an omega they were unlikely to comment. The beta guy who brought the tray didn’t even look him in the face, which was when Carry realized that even a beta could tell he looked terrible. He would have given him a tip but he had no idea where his wallet was. He’d barely managed to find a complimentary robe on time to open the door as it was. He mumbled a thanks and hoped the guy didn’t think he was an asshole.

The food helped a little, and the tea helped a lot: waking him up fully. only then did he pick up the phone and call management.

“I’m going into heat,” he said as soon as greetings were out of the way. No point in dragging it out.

“Now?” Coach Ramirez asked, gruff, not surprised.

“It’s starting.”

“How long?”

Carry hesitated, every time he had had to ask for time off for heat he’d felt like he was sticking a nail into his hockey coffin. “Probably won’t play the Protectors.”

“Okay, get... get better soon,” Coach told him, and hung up.

At least he hadn’t asked if he needed anything the way betas sometimes did. Some of them weren’t close to any omegas, which he got, but how did they manage to miss the fact that their society catered for the needs of partners and individuals going into heat? Some people thought betas would eventually disappear, without the instinct to mate it was easy for them to put it off for career, or to choose partners who weren’t fertile or who, being the same sex, they weren’t able to procreate with. Alphas and omegas would outlast them all, the last line of defence for a species whose fertility levels were plummeting faster than their mortality rate ever could.

Not that it didn’t sound nice, no heats, but one had to have their silver linings.

He went back to the shower, hoping more cold water would help. His low level arousal wouldn’t abate, though, and he ended up turning the water hotter and beating it right there. Clean and economical and almost pointless, he was still hard at the end and feeling close to tearing his own skin off in stripes. He didn’t bother with a towel, just went for his suitcase and unpacked till he found the big toy he kept there for times like this. He’d hoped to put it off till after lunch, at least, but heat was rising faster and faster. He stumbled on his way back to the bed and almost dropped it.

“Fuck,” he panted at the empty room. He wanted someone here... Not someone, no, an alpha... And then he could smelt it, too. Sand warmed by the sun. Not just any alpha: Avali.

 _Why had he touched him?_ He dug his nails into his palms, punishing and useless as another wave of arousal hit him and made him curl up, his cock was hard against his belly and his thighs were wet with something slicker than water. He was wet already. Ready to... He exhaled shakily and groped around the covers and found the dildo, then rolled over and brace his feet on the bed. He knew it wasn’t real but he inhaled anyway, trying to catch more of the smell of warm sand and slightly salty air. He was so _stupid_ , he thought as he pressed his fingers into his hole, two at a time and a little rough and not caring. The smell should have been a clue: it was what it smelled like in the summer house, his favourite place in the whole world. It was so _obvious_ , so textbook... He pulled himself open and fumbled to place the dildo at his entrance, then pressed hard enough to make it pop past the ring of muscle. A grating whine left his throat, he didn’t know if it was pain or pleasure, if he wanted more or less. But he needed it anyway. The unyielding pressure of the silicone didn’t feel quite right, it wasn’t warm enough, and, of course, it didn’t move like a person would have. Even so, he felt himself getting wetter as he got the whole of it inside himself, arse clenching against the invasion and lubricating to make it easier. It wasn’t enough, but it was close enough his body knew how to react to it. He pulled it out, fast enough to leave him feeling empty, and pushed back in, hard enough to hurt even as it made contact with his prostrate and his cock jerked, splattering his chest and stomach without him even needing to touch it. He let his hand fall off the toy still embedded into his arse, feeling lax but not sated. He was _still_ hard. What would it take to catch a break? It had never got this intense so fast before, and it had got pretty bad on occasion. Bad enough that even pain couldn’t stop the arousal, the need making him touch himself despite the chaffing.

Worse still, he was already tired and it wasn’t even lunch time, how was he going to keep it up on his own? The answer was rather dispiriting: He wasn’t. He needed someone.

Well, he would anyway, right now he needed to get to the water or he was going to pant himself into unconsciousness.

It wasn’t till around seven in the evening that, having eaten the cold remains of his breakfast, he managed to compose himself enough to shower again (one orgasm in the shower) and throw some clothes on. He needed to get to a club, in the state he was in he didn’t have time for anything more sophisticated. Whoever had proved an omega couldn’t die from heat need alone sure as hell had never gone through the experience themselves. Intense pleasure wasn’t that much greater than intense pain when your nerve endings were getting fried with it every two seconds. Not that it was really pleasure, it was the need for it, the want of it, that really dominated a lonely heat.

He stumbled out of his room almost blindly. He had located his wallet, but only because he needed to take a cab if he expected to get further than the hotel lobby.

He didn’t get to the lobby, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added some bits and pieces to this chapter based Mykko's suggestions.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leaving PG-13 land behind in about two minutes ;)

 

& 

 **Keenan**  

The scent had woken him from his nap, syrupy sweet and almost overwhelming. He had found himself blinking awake and searching for it around his empty suite before realizing it had been a dream he’d been having. An absurdly realistic dream about licking caramel off someone’s skin. Except the scent was real, and so was the person behind it. He didn’t even need to think about it, he’d spent the last months fighting the intense longing for sweet things he’d developed since Johnson had joined the team. 

Johnson’s room was on the same floor, had they given him an old room without appropriate scent-blocking by mistake? Had they given _Keenan_ one as well? And then that made him wonder because he had never smelt an omega’s heat from a hotel room: was Johnson even in his room? He almost walked out of the room in his boxers and t-shirt before he realized what he was doing, and when he did, he made himself stop and get a two of his suppressants. It was double the doses and he had taken one the day before, but if he was forgetting _clothes_... And suddenly he remembered something else: Johnson had kissed him. The wave of want that thought brought with it made him lean his forehead against the wall in search of coolness. He could... He hit his head hard against the wall, groaning in pain, but it cleared his mind a little, enough that he could get some water to swallow the pills with and wash his face. 

The suppressants worked fairly fast, he realized by the time he left the bathroom. He was already feeling better. Of course he still needed to go to Johnson. If he was in hall while in full heat, he couldn’t be thinking clearly himself.  

It didn’t require any thought at all to head in the right direction, his feet walked him there till the sight of Johnson stopped him cold. Or maybe not cold: Objectively, Johnson looked awful, big circles under his eyes, his blond hair beyond disarray and seriously into tornado survivor territory and his clothes clearly thrown on any which way. For some reason he’d ended up in jeans and dress shoes. But all that was lost in a cloud of caramel scented delight, eyes bright and rose pink lips parted. His head snapped up to look at Keenan and he groaned, leaning his weight against the closest wall for support. “I can’t... I can’t deal right now,” he said, tired but not angry for once. The way his lids were drooping Keenan imagined he was too tired to get angry. It was certainly a first.  

It took him a moment to find his own voice, and it still came out all distorted when he did. “You shouldn’t be out here... like this.” 

Johnson sighed. “Yeah, well,” He waved a hand weakly. “You shouldn’t either.” He pushed himself off the wall and took a step closer. He was blocking the way to the exit, Keenan realized and he almost moved. Johnson was an omega and Keenan couldn’t touch him so he couldn’t block the exit, not with his body. If Johnson had to squeeze by him, it was still Keenan’s responsibility... Except having Johnson that close brought back something he had been trying not to think about since it had happened: Johnson had given him permission. When he still didn’t move, Johnson glanced up at him. “Move,” he ordered, voice gravelly. 

“No,” Keenan replied. “You can’t go out like this.”  

This seemed to snap him out of his stupor, blood rushed to his face and his teeth clenched. “I didn’t fucking kiss you so you can order me around!” Johnson shouted almost in his face. 

Keenan had to shake his head to clear it. “Well, though, because I _need_ to keep you safe,” he found himself confessing through clenched teeth, and it was true. He didn’t know if it was part of the bond of family or team or just that an omega in need was an omega in need. But he couldn’t let Johnson walk out and... Not even if his shaking shoulders were physically painful to watch. But even so, Keenan knew him too well not to be wary when he straightened them out and met his eyes. He looked feverish, flushed and bright eyed. Like a strong breeze would tip him over. But there was nothing _weak_ about his desperation. “Get out of my way,” he growled, a head shorter than Keenan and at least thirty kilos lighter and ready to make it happen anyway, “or come back to my room with me.” 

For a second, Keenan didn’t understand what the words even meant. Then somehow the meaning filtered to his brain and in a second flat he was dizzy with want. He’d taken a double dose and _it didn’t matter_. It didn’t matter that Johnson was clearly a man, or that he hated Keenan... Keenan wanted him so much he felt his vision blurring. When he came back to himself he found he had clenched his fists so hard he was digging his short nails into his palms. He was about to step back with the sort of titanic effort of will he’d be proud of later and that felt like tearing off your own nails when Johnson growled in frustration and with the same speed that made him lethal on the ice, took a step closer to Keenan and shoved him on the chest to try and get him out of his way. And just like that, it was over. Keenan was pressing his whole body against Johnson, forcing him against the wall, and Johnson wasn’t going quietly either, he entangled his arms around his neck and brought his mouth down for a kiss that put the family peck in another universe of sensation. 

He’d never slept with an omega at all, but instinct was powerful enough that he could manage to stop kissing Johnson long enough to get him out of the open.  

& 

 **Cartwright**  

There was a point in a game where you knew you no longer had a chance of winning. It wasn’t often, thank the heavens, but it happened. Carry was really bad at knowing the moment had arrived, he’d just persist, keep pushing himself no matter the 7/1 score against his team and the fifteen minutes left to play. It was pointless, but it was the only way Carry could keep playing at all. He was an all or nothing kind of guy, and once accepted the game was over he couldn’t go through the motions. He couldn’t pretend. But he could hope, especially because his hoping had, in the past, sometimes worked. He’d turned around a 5/1 game as an ambitions twelve year old once. 

Poor odds didn’t scare him on the ice, and they sure as hell didn’t scare him off it. Just because he wanted Avali so badly his bones ached for him, it didn’t mean he had to give up and obey the moment he showed up, just follow that threat of alpha power on his team mate’s voice and let it unravel him. Just because he was _burning_ with need and had given Avali permission to touch, it didn’t mean he was going to be told to go back to his room like a good little omega. Avali couldn’t make him do _anything_. Nobody could. So he’d pushed the alpha to get him out of his way and when he’d found himself pressed flat against the wall he had the comfort of knowing he was getting what _he_ wanted. He had wanted an alpha to bed through this heat, after all, and here he was, the very fine specimen who’d got him so bothered in the first place. 

It was only fair to let Avali pick him up, to close his legs like a vice around his waist and not stop kissing him for a single moment as Avali walked them to his room. Carry would have rather they went to his own, but he couldn’t spare the breath to say so. 

Avali had him flat on his back on his enormous bed before he could take in any details beyond the heady way the room smelled. Carry squirmed around him, lifting his hips to press his aching cock against Avali’s abs and Avali growled right in his ear and pushed right back, his own cock a hot pressure even though their clothes. Carry got his hand between them and managed to get the button undone. He _needed_ it. More than anything. Right now. “Stop that,” Avali growled at him, and slammed Carry’s wrist down flat on the bed over his head. 

Carry glowered from under him, his weight felt so good and… “I need it _now_ ,” he snapped. “If you are not giving it to me I’ll…” 

But Avali didn’t let him finish that, his mouth descending on Carry’s to kiss away any objections. Carry was almost convinced by the sweet, slick kiss, the sheer possessiveness of being covered completely by a strong alpha and _taken_. But the sensation only reminded him of how empty he felt, how wet and ready he was for it. He twisted his neck, tearing his mouth from Avali, whose mouth ended up dangerously close to Carry’s neck before he raised his head and asked with barely repressed frustration, “What?” 

“Do it, I need…” 

Avali transferred his grip to a single hand and Carry felt the other on his trousers, the zipper being lowered sounded thunderous in the room silent except for their panting breaths. And then it came a second time as Avali opened his own: Carry buckled under him, trying to get his hands free and reach for it. Avali didn’t understand, he didn’t see how much… Avali tightened his hand on Carry’s wrists almost painfully and before he knew what was happening Carry found himself being flipped face down, arse sticking up. His jeans and underwear were yanked down his thighs, effectively making it impossible to move his legs separately, and then Avali’s free hand was sliding down possessively to cup his right arsecheek, “This? You need this?” 

Carry could have cried, it was, almost. He needed to be filled, really filled, like no toy could manage. Avali’s fingers slid between his cheeks and the man groaned when his fingers came into contact with the slickness there, Carry pushed up against them, begging without words, and Avali gave in, pushing a finger into his hole. Carry distantly heard his heartfelt groan but he didn’t care, the only thing that mattered was the strong finger he was clenching around, and then the second one, and the third. When Avali pushed a fourth in, Carry protested, “Now… I… no more fingers.” 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Avali replied. 

“You won’t,” Carry drunkenly mumbled back, twisting to look at him as Avali let go of his wrists. “You..." 

He pulled his fingers away, making Carry groan at the sudden emptiness even as he knew Avali needed his hands to get his pants and underwear out of the way. Suddenly he understood Avali’s concern: his cock was gorgeous, red and slick and… huge. Thicker than anything Carry had seen, even in porn, and definitely thicker than four fingers. His mouth filled with saliva, but he didn’t have time to gawk much longer because Avali’s hand was at his waist now, turning him around and positioning him in all fours and then he felt it nudge between his arsecheeks. Then the head found his hole and Avali had to hold his hips steady as he pushed against the resistance of Carry’s body. It can’t… Carry vaguely thought, and then the combination of pressure and wetness made the head pop past the ring of muscle. Carry shuddered, nails digging into the bedding as his body fought the conflicting instinct to take all he was given and the physical reality of size. Avali paused for a moment, then rolled his hips a little, putting a little more in and making Carry feel like he was about to tear. His breath hitched and Avali’s face nudged him over his left shoulder, whispering in his ear with a gentleness Carry wouldn’t have thought him capable of, “Come on, it’s what you needed, right? Just breathe for me, Johnson.” 

Carry nodded, trying to listen, not to take offense that Avali was trying to be nice to him. As his breathing evened out, his arse stopped feeling like it’d burst and Avali could gently push in and out. He was so wet now it was dripping down his thighs and he found himself pushing back against the invasion, taking Avali’s cock deeper into himself, his own cock bobbing free under him. He was still surprised into a curse when, almost all the way in, Avali’s hips just snapped, seating him fully inside Carry’s body with a jolt of pain that rattled him. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Avali mumbled, shuddering still with the aftershocks of pleasure. “I didn’t mean…” 

He twisted his hips a little and Carry’s neck seemed to give up on him, all his concentration on the rush of pleasure he felt as the cock head pressed fully against his prostate. There was something like relief mixed in it, too, like his body knew he’d given in, like it could tell what it needed was coming. Avali must have been able to feel him relaxing because he pulled out and then pushed back in again, Carry whimpered, and Avali did it again, a little faster. And again, a little harder, too. A couple strokes in, or five, Carry’s elbows bent of their own accord and he found himself sprawling on the bed, arse up and face turned to take in breath as Avali didn’t even pause in rutting in and out of his arse, holding his hips steady as he thrust. It was... he felt so exposed, so... helpless. He didn’t know if it was his own body or Avali who made him feel like that, but he _couldn’t stop. He_ pushed back, opened his legs as much as his half removed clothing would allow and just gave himself into it. Whole body and soul. Avali moaned, wet mouth sucking kisses into his spine as his thrusting sped up. Carry could feel his orgasm building, inevitable like the tide, and so good it almost hurt. Avali was too big inside him, and just right... Just what he needed, even if not what he wanted. 

He didn’t bother asking for a reach around, instead he pushed up and he did it himself, tucking his head in to use it to support the weight his right hand wasn’t. His hand had barely closed around his cock when he started to convulse, coming hard and fast, contracting around the cock inside him till it felt like Avali wouldn’t be able to pull out at all. Avali actually shouted, freezing for a second before he jabbed in again with renewed desperation and started coming. Carry could feel it inside, Avali’s dick was big enough that he couldn’t miss it growing bigger with ejaculate, and wet as he had been, he certainly couldn’t miss the heat of his come filling him up, then overflowing down his buttocks. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably won't have internet for a bit, but oth, that means I will have nothing to do but write, so who knows. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this chapter, feedback of any kind super welcome :)


	8. Stone Cold Awake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No beta, as usual, but this chapter is longer, at least. Would love to hear from you! :)

&

**Keenan**

He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have because next thing he knew his alarm was going off. His arms tightened around the body in his arms before he had quite processed what was happening, or who... _Oh, gods, Johnson_. He felt him waken with the residual bond, the residual bond because they had _heat sex_. His hand was touching Johnson's toned abs, soft and a little sweaty and completely surreal. He smelled good still, despite... No, he admitted, closing his eyes and forcing himself to breathe through his mouth, trying to get enough air, he smelled _better_. He needed to move away, to roll off the bed, but he couldn't, his muscles were locked in place and... Johnson took hold of his forearm, lifted it and rolled off the bed in a single athletic move. It surprised Keenan into looking up at him and he regretted it instantly: there was a mark high on Johnson's spine, a bruise with the faint edge of teeth. For a second his vision blurred so much he couldn't tell if the skin had been broken and then Johnson picked up his shirt and put it on, covering it. But he wasn't talking to Keenan, surely that couldn't be right if he had bitten hard enough for bonding? He was aware of Johnson, and he could tell he was more agitated than he was letting show, but that was about it. A bond was supposed to be almost like reading someone’s mind.

"Did I...?" He got out before the raspy quality of his own voice gave him pause. Johnson stopped moving, then tilted his head in Keenan's direction. He wasn't avoiding Keenan's own gaze, he was avoiding looking at him altogether. He wanted to ask about the bite, but he couldn't find the words. That simple question, one more word and he couldn’t manage it. "Are you okay?" he asked instead and he could see Johnson's mouth twist in profile.

"You did me a favour," he declared, ignoring Keenan's question. "Which I appreciate, but, on the other hand, you got an orgasm out of it. I think we can just forget this happened and move on."

"But..."

"I need to go call coach now, tell him I'll be able to play the next game, after all. _Another_ upside for you, I might add."

And just like that, he'd walked out of Keenan's room, like it had been nothing, just a one night stand, just... Except he’d never been that rude to any of the girls he’d picked up in a bar; they’d known it was temporary but it hadn’t been devoid of warmth. The way Johnson was behaving, the night... what had happened between them was even less than a moment of joy with a stranger. And it was _heat_. The time some people believed you were only supposed to share with your bondmate, with someone you wanted to be with forever. There were more modern views, of course, but not even the most radical claimed that heat was meaningless, and having experienced it, Keenan couldn’t see how anyone could. Even worse, if it was meaninguless... If it was just sex, that meant Keenan had just fucked a guy because he wanted him. And that wasn't true, Keenan had never felt attracted to a guy in his life before Johnson had shown up with his damned omega pheromones.

He'd had plenty of girls, betas all of them because he wasn't ready to commit, of course, but some of them had been serious if not permanent. He had love Jessica, if she'd only been an omega he'd have gone for it, bonded and moved in together, everything... But Jessica had been too smart to get hitched to a guy who needed something else to feel truly happy. Keenan had hated her for it when she'd broken up with him, but he understood now. If this was what omega sex was like... even with a guy, a guy who hated him, a guy Keenan didn't even like beyond the beauty of his passes and his enticing natural scent... Well, no, he didn't want to give that up forever and ever to marry a beta. Not even Jessica, who he had loved like the idiot boy he'd been when they were together.

If he looked at it like that, it could almost be a learning experience, like falling on the ice. You learned what moves would end up with you on your arse and you avoided them in future. Now he knew the pheromones of a compatible omega could get through his suppressants, he understood how powerful chemistry was, how it could overwhelm his personality and his true desires and make him...

He knew and that meant he would have to be more careful, but he could be safe.

&

 

**Cartwright**

Carry wondered sometimes how he'd fucked up his karma so massively. He knew his tongue was a bit sharper than was nice --or sometimes proper--, but other than that, he kept to himself and supported his teammates and loved his family, who didn’t get how hard it was to be an omega. So how come the universe kept screwing him over like this? He could admit that it had been his own stupidity that had made him give Avali the kiss, sure, but who’d put Avali two doors down from him? Wasn’t management supposed to try and keep them apart to prevent a scandal? He’d pretended to be oblivious back with the Titans, but Pucio had never been given a room in the same floor as him during his whole time there. And what about scent-blocking rooms in fancy hotels like that were supposed to? It was just one too many coincidences.

And even so, he wasn’t exactly sorry. Thanks to Avali’s... intervention, he hadn’t missed the game and the way Avali had been playing, he sure as hell needed the help. And he could never be sorry not to have to go through heat alone, minutes upon minutes that felt like hours and literally _days_ , honest sunset to sundown deals of hurting himself trying to give his body what it needed when he _didn’t have it_... all the while hoping his body gave up so he could fall into an exhausted sleep. After that, he needed a couple more days to recover, as if he’d been sick. And every single omega was expected to just put up with it till they met an alpha they wanted to keep forever.

It was bullshit, of course, but after the way the Titans’ management had reacted, he had no doubt that if anybody found out about Avali, it’d still destroy his career. Maybe he should have been nicer to him afterwards, not that being nice had helped any last time he’d left himself that exposed in front of an alpha. It wasn’t fair, he knew that, he knew Avali wasn’t Pucio, but the lesson was no less taught: trust was expensive. Still, he didn’t need to trust Avali gave a fuck about _him_ , it was enough that he cared about what Carry could do for the team. He hadn’t been useless to the Titans, but the way he and Avali played together, he knew he was enough to turn a game. He still thought about saying something, but although he was okay with Avali on the ice, he didn’t really want to have to look at him in the face out of it.

He knew he shouldn’t have been embarrassed; after all, it was just sex, just the body doing what bodies did. People insisted that wasn’t possible for omegas, but it wasn’t supposed to be possible for alphas, either, was it? And craving connection didn’t keep them from sowing their wild oats just fine with every beta who wanted a taste. He thought about Avali and his stunned look when Carry had walked out after waking up, about the fact that Avali had been holding on to him like a very soft statue... and it didn’t really change the fact that he irritated the hell out of him. Seeing the way Avali carried his alpha certainty from the ice into the locker room still made Carry grit his teeth, his nice friendly smiles still got him on edge even when they weren’t directed at him --like something in him could tell that Avali was a very dangerous predator disguised in a beautiful package--, and he definitely did not want to go back to Avali’s bed --even after getting close and personal with those arms of his. Well, sure, he could give Avali that much, he was nice to look at. But despite his scent, that was all it was, Carry wanted to fuck him, just like he’d wanted to fuck lots of people before, but without heat madness there was no overwhelming impulse to _do it_.

Mostly when he looked at Avali now, all he could think about was the fact that Avali had a sword dangling over Carry’s neck. He knew Avali had many reasons not to let it drop but after that the last time… It was just that the last time had been so catastrophic that he couldn’t help but worry a little anyway. But it was healthy to worry a little, really. It didn’t mean there was really anything to talk to Avali about, no sign that Avali would bring the matter up at all to him or anybody. And if he wanted to corner him and demand his silence… well, that was just instinct, and he gave into enough as it was. He still hadn’t forgot by the end of the winter cycle and the start of the holiday break. But he figured with his mother coming to town, he’d have way too many things to worry about and by the time they came back, he’d be fine with it. It’d be as if it had never happened. Fake it till you make it, right?

&

Carry’s parents and sister were betas, but it wasn’t just that that set them apart: he didn’t know how it was possible to be related to all of them and have so little in common. He’d had a happy childhood, full of games and expensive toys and even family holidays in the coastal town from which his mother originated. But that was summer, not the real world. The real world didn’t have room for the simple pleasures of summer: washing sand off your salty sticky skin, and eating corn in the cobs straight from the grill, and curling up next to a warm beloved body after playing for hours.

And that was how it should be as far as his mother was concerned. She was happy to indulge in childish games back in the place where she had been a child, but in the city she was a lady of respectable lineage, a mother and a benefactor. She wasn’t cold towards Carry or Sandra, but she was busy. Carry loved her, with the simple gratitude of a child towards its carers, but he never felt like he understood her. Or like she understood him. She had vehemently opposed his hockey career --although, to be fair, she’d have opposed it if he had been an alpha or a beta--, and she made it clear that her expectations hadn’t changed any time they saw each other. His father was, if anything, more of a mystery. Even when they were kids, he’d often missed family holidays to work, or left early to return to the office. There wasn’t any need that Carry could see, what with the houses and the investments and the savings, but his father felt, and often said, that work must come first.

And Sandra... They’d been friends once, or at least companions. She was only a few years older and they’d been each others’ first playmates. But it was different now, he could see a certain sense in her inclination towards all that was beautiful, be it dead or alive, --including wild leopards and eagles for her gardens. But he couldn’t see why if she loved beauty so, she didn’t want to _create_ any. Carry was, in his own way, an admirer of perfections of form, too. He ached inside at a perfect pass, at the depths of a frozen river --full of promise and danger both--, at the swift movement of muscles across a man’s back, at the thud of a puck against your stick that announced the purple light of a goal. He thrived on beauty, but he wanted to be part of it, too. He wanted to be the cause of it, so that it wasn’t simple admiration, but accomplishment.

So he smiled as he opened the door, trying to appear glad when he was always a little uncertain. His mother smiled back and said his name the way only she could manage. “Cartwright!” she sounded pleased, but her eyes lingered on his clothes for a moment before she stepped closer for an embrace. Carry closed his arms around her, she was wearing heels and they were of a height, and held on for a second, letting the scent of her perfume and skin invade his senses. She was noseblind, of course, and she couldn’t smell the fragrance she had been wearing for decades any more than she could smell her own subtle scent, but it was the thing Carry more closely associated with her holding him. And for all she disapproved and commented, when she held him, Carry was sure she loved him anyway.

When she stepped back, he discovered Sandra watching them with a soft lipsticked smile. She looked like something out of a magazine, a silk three-piece suit dark as the reddest of wines that brought out her green eyes and her pose so straight it made Carry unconsciously straighten.

“Hey, Carry,” she greeted. The nickname that always had their mother’s lips twitch, but that she’d had to allow because Sandra hadn’t been able to say some words as a child. The lisp was gone, but Sandra still spoke slowly, like she was afraid her mouth would betray her if she wasn’t careful, Carry thought, but with the clothes and the placidly pleased expression most often on her face, he supposed it looked confident instead. “You look like you could use lunch,” she said. She was right, of course, Carry wasn’t a big guy and playing a game almost every other day and training as well meant he lost a lot of weight during the season. “We have brought the car.”

Of course they had, he thought ruefully. He hadn’t been in a car since the summer when he’d gone home. It made sense to keep one in the countryside, so of course his family had several. In the city even one was unnecessary and ostentatious, with public transport connecting everything and running nonstop. But his mother didn’t believe in public transport and Carry already knew what she’d say if he pointed out that she was campaigning to save forests and then wasting energy. She wasn’t exactly wrong, it wasn’t like the few private cars around made a big difference and she more than paid the fees to drive them around, fees used to plant more trees.

“Sure,” he told Sandra, and endured her mother chuckling doubtfully about his best suit –no way was he wearing one of the tailor-made ones he had at home, even if they could be adjusted to fit his adult shoulders— and just enjoyed their chatter about the restaurants in the city they were eager to try and how long ago they should’ve made reservations.

&

It was Sandra, the little traitor, who brought up Avali. “He’s handsome, and he’s your linemate, you must have noticed.”

Carry rolled his eyes at her, her weird combination of high society politeness and store clerk gossip had never worked on him. “Yes, I have eyes.”

“Is this that dark skinned man we saw on television sitting next to you?” His mother wanted to know.

“No,” Carry assured her. He didn’t know who she meant, but Avali would have never sat next to him in public.

“That’s Santiago Garcia, mother,” Sandra reprimanded. “He’s obviously Hispanic.”

“Actually, Santiago is Welsh,” Carry corrected, “his grandparents were from Chile.”

“Well, he’s… you know, culturally.”

Carry snorted. “Ethnically?” he asked. “Please do not pretend to be sensitive.”

“My _point_ ,” his sister insisted, “It’s that he’s clearly not Avali.”

“That he isn’t. Santiago is a rookie, Avali is twenty-four. Pretty hard to get confused.”

“Has this Avali treated you well?” His mother asked.

Carry startled, then nodded. “Yes, he’s a good teammate. He… He and I play very well together.”

“We know,” Sandra said, and Carry almost forgave her for bringing it up in the first place. He knew she didn’t understand the first thing about hockey, being a fan of sports only if they involved horses being shown off in some way. "Everybody keeps telling us this season you are on fire,” she explained, seemingly completely missing the pun journalists had become so fond of.

“Well, I have to get better with practice, do I not?” He put a piece of the food he had so carefully cut up in his mouth without even looking to see what it was. A sprout, he realised, and made himself chewed through it slowly. It tasted terrible but it gave him some time.

“Yes,” his mother agreed and Carry knew immediately that the topic hadn’t been dropped. “You have to, which is why I expect you will be keeping as far away from this alpha as possible.”

He put his fork down as gently as he could manage but it still made an unseemly noise. “I know what I have to do.”

“I just want to make sure you are being careful, son,” she pressed. “If you insist on continuing with hockey, then you have to keep certain appearances.” She put up a hand, an Carry had been trained from too young an age to speak over that. “I do not wish to see you lose the source of your happiness,” she ended. He wasn’t sure if she meant it, she certainly wanted him to find another source, and if he lost hockey, what other choice would he have? But no, she wanted him to be happy with a respectable job, yes, but she wanted him to be happy more, he was sure of it.

“I won’t,” Carry promised, to them, to himself. “I won’t mess up. I will be more careful.”

 


	9. Every Action and Its Reaction

&

**Keenan**

It didn't count if you were drunk. Everybody knew that. And heat was a lot like drinking. Like getting blind drunk, to be precise. It affected your reflexes and your judgement enough that omegas couldn't make any legally binding decisions during it. Of course, nobody had figured out a way to keep omegas from _bonding_ during heat, and it didn’t get any more binding than that.

But they hadn't. They hadn’t bonded. Even in his altered state of mind he had known better than to bite an omega he barely knew and definitely didn't want when he was in his right mind. So it wasn't a big deal, he wasn't attracted to men, sure, had never even needed to experiment to decide he was straight. But there wasn’t anything wrong with experimenting, even if it didn’t change your mind, even if it was only to make sure. If anybody asked him again if he’d _tried it_ before deciding he didn’t like it, he’d even be able to say yes. He’d skipped university and the wild drunken parties to focus on hockey, so why not go a little wild and have heat sex with a guy? He hadn’t had a drop of alcohol but one mind altering substance was as much a justification as another if you thought about it.

And anyway, he had fucked women from behind before. There wasn't anything gay in the act itself. Not that he remembered it clearly: the whole thing seemed hazy and unreal in his head, like a half remembered dream.

He was grateful for that even if what he did recall was the intensity of it all, like nothing else he... He couldn't keep from poking at the memory, trying to bring forth details even as he rationally knew it was a bad idea. At least they’d left for break just after the game with the Protectors and he’d had his family to take his mind off things. One thing they were not was quiet, or unobtrusive.

For all of Johnson’s bragging, they had won by such a small margin and with such substandard playing by their line that it was almost shameful anyway. But he guessed he should count himself fortunate that he hadn’t messed up their game further by breaking the cardinal rule and _sleeping with a teammate_. He had never even had to try before, the team had had two women in the roster during his time with them, but Keenan had never even had a thought about either of them.

It was hard to tell for sure because Johnson was acting exactly the same way he had since they'd had that talk and he’d given Keenan that kiss. That goddamned kiss… And he still talked to Keenan about hockey in his direct fashion. He still kept a polite distance the rest of the time. He still smelled like caramel, and he still didn't know he'd made Keenan spend twice as much in sweets as he ever had before and add twenty reps to every exercise in his training routine to make up for it.

That grated on Keenan's nerves even more, that he could just go on with his life like that. It shouldn’t have: since they couldn’t undo what they had done, pretending it hadn’t happened was the next best thing. But it just wouldn’t leave Keenan’s mind. He kept getting flashes. Johnson’s mouth, the kisses, sweeter than he had expected and his spine arched in pleasure when he had just... surrendered to it. Surrendered to _Keenan_. So intense he had put his mouth to him even though he’d known it was dangerous, just a tiny, almost insignificant inch from biting. The memories kept coming to him and he woke up sweaty and sticky and longing for...

And Johnson talked to him like it hadn’t even happened. It went beyond unfair. He had never wanted Johnson, not really, whatever his dick thought about an omega who smelt just right, but now he couldn’t get him out of his mind. He just couldn’t: the attraction might have been a temporary trick of their body chemistry but the memories were real, and so was Johnson.

And he was everywhere. But especially, he was on the ice. And on the ice Keenan couldn’t afford the distraction, especially not with a real game coming up in three days.

Coach noticed, of course, although he was pretty nice about breaking it to Keenan. “Look, I’m not making assumptions or anything, but you guys are off again. So as assistant captain, it goes to you to sort that out.” Keenan nodded and coach kept going, “Is it the rumours? Are they making things weird between you and Johnson?”

“Rumours?” Keenan repeated blankly.

Coach sighed like a man used to putting up with people who got a lot of hits to the head. “Have you not got all the interview requests from PR?”

“Well, yeah, I have one in a couple days, what about it?”

Coach massaged his head. “Those idiots didn’t say anything to you?”

Keenan tried to remember. “Just that it was a good time to do it.”

“We expected something like this might happen when we put you on the same line... that some idiots would jump to the conclusion there was something between you and Johnson.”

Keenan stared at him in horror, then made himself swallow and let out only the part of the truth that didn’t incriminate him. “Really? But we play hockey, why do they care about our sex lives anyway?”

Coach gave him a measured look, but his response was mild. “More like a secret romance angle, from what I heard.”

This made Keenan relax, he snorted incredulously. “Clearly they have never seen us together.”

“Clearly,” Coach agreed.

“Should I get a girlfriend?” He asked, suddenly uncertain. Sure, Coach believed him, but that didn’t do anything to make the rest of the world do the same.

Coach rolled his eyes heavenward. “You want to look suspicious, Avali? There’s rumours about you and a teammate and you start dating some model to make them go away? They’d eat that up with a spoon.”

“Oh, okay, so... then what?”

“No comment till it goes away. No pictures, no proof, so it shouldn’t take long.”

“Okay,” Keenan said again.

But of course that didn't solve the actual problem they were there to discuss. “If it’s not the rumours, what’s messing with your game?”

The list seemed endless, impossible to articulate even if half of it hadn’t been private.

“I’ll ask them to stay behind today,” he offered instead, “we’ll figure it out.”

 

&

**Carry**

Thomas gave Avali an incredulous look. “You want me to stay late? Just like this? No notice?”

Avali shrugged. “We gotta fix whatever’s messing with us,” he gestured towards the ice, “ _before_ the next game.”

Thomas ground his teeth. “I think we all know what’s messing...” He trailed off, obviously thinking better of it, but Carry didn’t need to hear it. Thomas wasn’t stupid, of course he’d cottoned on to the fact that Avali and he were weird around each other. He'd have to be stupid not to, they had started out making him mediate most of their conversations and Carry knew he often looked at Thomas when he couldn’t quite mange to look at Avali. That also meant Carry owed him. Thomas had never even brought up the fact that he had to help them talk to each other about strategy until Coach had intervened.

“I don’t mind staying with you, Avali,” he said. And both his teammates turned to him. Thomas was grinning, Avali looked shocked.

He didn’t have time to recover before Thomas replied, “Perfect! Thanks, mate.”

Avali only got to open his mouth before Thomas was striding off in long, even slides of his skates. “He’s got a date,” Carry thought to mention then, “he’s been talking about it for days.”

“He has?” Avali said, apparently recovering speech.

Carry glanced at him. He’d assumed everybody was as tired of hearing about the dreamy Andre as he was. “Yeah.” He shrugged, and skated to the bench to get his stick. He turned in a circle fast enough that he barely had to pause before finishing his sentence in Avali's hearing range. “It’s not fair, anyway. This always happens when we are feeling weird around each other, it’s not like Thomas can help that.”

“Feeling weird?” Avali repeated, not moving from his spot, but Carry thought his tone sounded dubious.

He sighed. He should have done this sooner, he knew it. He’d promised himself he would as soon as they got back, but then he’d stepped on the ice and he hadn’t been able to. It had been selfish, and it was time to grow up and do the right thing.

“Off,” he clarified, waving his hand between them, “because of what happened, because of what you could...” He stopped, swallowing. He couldn’t stand to feel this powerless. It was the whole reason he hated heat in the first place, the reason he had put off finding some random alpha to get him through it besides the vague hope that his fucking suppressants would work.

“Because I could what?” Avali asked in a rasping voice.

“You could tell,” Carry finished. He pulled a roll of tape and started re-taping his stick so as not to look at him.

“Tell what?” Avali asked, then lowered his voice even though they were alone, “that we... what we did? Why would I tell? It’s private.”

Carry agreed, of course, but that hadn’t stopped Pucio, or Villiers. “Yeah, well, that’s... subjective.”

“No, it’s _not_ ,” Avali insisted, “that’s why sex happens in bedrooms.”

Carry sighed, he didn’t want to fight and he definitely didn’t want to tell Avali he'd been stupid enough to sleep with someone who didn't even get that. Pucio hadn't even accepted the blame for... “Okay, that’s good. That’s...”

“You are my teammate,” Avali insisted, and in his multicoloured scent Carry could almost make out something that was close to love, something he thought might be loyalty. “I would never do that.”

Carry straightened a little and nodded. “Okay,” he agreed easily, and he made himself add, “Thank you.”

“Do you really expect so little of me?” Carry looked up at the sharp acidity of his teammate’s scent. Avali shook his head, clearly torn between fury and sadness.

Carry made himself not look away. He knew he shouldn’t, he was asking a favour of an alpha and they hated it when you looked them in the eye. This level of defiance... but _he couldn’t_. It was just so fucking wrong to be lectured about assuming the worse of someone who had the power to destroy your fucking life just by being a little careless. Someone who had nothing to worry about because the same things that would end your career would slide off his reputation like he was impermeable.

“Have you missed the way people treat omegas who can’t go through their heats alone before bonding?” he asked with pure unrepressed bitterness. “Were you in some other universe when Galicia Sanderson was publicly humiliated for sleeping with her boyfriend _last week_?”

“Um, but that’s... she is...” Avali stopped, a celebrity, he had been about to say. Except they were close enough to the public eye as to not make much of a difference.

“She is an _omega_ , and that’s all that matters.” Carry shook his head. “She would have probably married that asshole soon enough, but of course she should have suffered in silence like a good omega because we only get to enjoy ourselves when an alpha _owns_ us. And let’s not even dream that he’ll take some of the responsibility...!” Carry looked away, exhaling loudly. “I need to go,” he said under his breath and he was fast enough that Avali didn’t have time to object.


	10. Crash & Glue

&

**Keenan**

He hadn’t really been able to offer any decent counterarguments. If there were any, which Keenan kind of doubted. Things _were_ different for omegas, and in private it came with a lot of perks –even if an omega was physically strong, an alpha would be expected to help them with any heavy work—, but in public it seemed to be all about their sexuality and instincts and how, somehow, natural as it was, so many omegas seemed to cross the boundaries so carefully drawn to protect them.

He got why Johnson was angry, and he was mostly right about the press –even if his expectations of other people, or was it just alphas?—were ridiculously low. But none of that mattered because nothing was fixed. And they needed it fixed. Keenan knew that, angry or not, Johnson didn’t really want to let their hockey suffer. Keenan gave him a couple hours to cool down before getting his number off the team list and texting an invitation to dinner.

Johnson took a seat across from him like his body weighted a thousand kilos, but he was there.

He had located Keenan in the corner booth and headed straight for him without needing to glance around and Keenan suddenly realised it was because Keenan’s _scent_ was so familiar to him... He hoped that even this close Johnson couldn’t tell he was flushing –his skin was dark enough that he mostly got away with it. It was stupid, just pheromones, but...

“What do you want?” Johnson’s voice was dry and his gaze challengingly direct and bored at once –and that had to be faked, no way Johnson’s instincts weren’t screaming at him to look away when the intimacy of it was making _Keenan_ squirm.

He lowered his own eyes. He was annoyed, but he didn’t want to seem confrontational. “We haven’t fixed anything,” he replied as levelly as he could manage when he wanted to snap. It wasn’t his fault he was affected this way, or that it was interfering with their game. Sleeping together had been a mistake, obviously, but it wasn’t any more _his_ mistake than Johnson’s.

“And we are going to do that by, what, having a nice candlelit dinner?” Sharp and molten and burnt underneath, like he was barely keeping a lid on his anger.

But Keenan just didn't get what he had to be angry _about_ , he glanced down at the table in confusion. There were candles there, unlit, unsurprisingly since Keenan had reserved a table for two in the evening and this was a nice restaurant. He exhaled, trying to push his anger out like they’d been taught in yoga class in school. “We are going to do that by making sure you get, _really_ get that I have no problem whatsoever with omegas. Whatever... assholes you have met, I’m not like that. I’m not going to tell anybody about,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “the sex. In fact, I’m not going to talk about you to anybody that isn’t coach, or about anything that isn’t hockey.”

Johnson’s hands on the table were white knuckled and his scent was sharp, like lemon became when mixed with alcohol. Keenan wasn’t sure what it was, anxiety? Fear? “Okay,” he exhaled slowly. “Okay, I believe you.”

“Finally,” Keenan couldn’t keep back.

“Can you... You need to stay away from me next time I’m in heat,” Johnson said, eyes fixed on his fiddling fingers.

“Aren’t you on suppressants?” Keenan blurted out, he immediately regretted it, but he had been wondering about it. And he couldn't help but worry. He'd felt like he needed to shield Johnson before, now it was... It was only natural that he cared. Only a total dick would be able to sleep with someone and then forget all about them. And it wasn't like he and Johnson could part ways amicably when they _worked_ together.

Johnson’s scent was chilly but his glare could have melted the colourant right off Keenan’s clothes. “Do you think I’m stupid? Of course I’m on suppressants, the strongest there are!”

Keenan reacted, when it came to arguing he could never help himself. “But are you sure they are the right ones?”

“Are you a doctor now?” Johnson sneered. “Because I’m pretty sure I have a _team_ of doctors at my disposal. Not to mention I have been on them for six years.”

Keenan was about to snap back when that information registered. “Six years? But you are only...”

Johnson nodded sharply. “Yes, well. I’m... unlucky.”

Most people knew if they were alphas or omegas at around the time teenage hormones started messing with everybody’s bodies. Eleven was early, thirteen late but still normal. But omegas didn’t often go into heat till they were fully grown, for a man that was around seventeen, but sixteen wasn't unheard of. Fifteen, though, was _really_ young. _Illegally young_ , Keenan realised. Johnson must not have had a choice about the suppressants. Although clearly he was happy to stay on them. Of course, if he didn’t, it wasn’t likely he’d be able to play professionally.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not sure if he was talking about the heat or his inappropriate questions. “I took mine and they didn’t work anyway so...”

Johnson was silent for long enough that he looked up. There wasn’t mistaking the way his scent was almost fading for anything but secret keeping. He was actually really good at it, so good Keenan suspected that a stranger might have taken him for a beta.

“What is it?”

“They won’t work,” Johnson gritted out, and it wasn’t just his voice leaking emotion, his scent had gone sour and a bit salty, too. He sounded angry, but he smelt sad.

“Why not?”

Johnson shrugged, fiddling with the menu. “It’s on the leaflet: strong emotions and high compatibility mess with them.”

“I don’t think they mean hatred,” Keenan said, cautiously.

Johnson flinched, but didn’t look up. “Hatred? Are you saying you hate me?”

“Me?” Keenan sputtered. He still remembered the burnt scent he’d brought out in Johnson on the very day they’d met, if anybody was harbouring negative feeling here, it wasn’t _him_. “I find you hard to deal with, why would I hate you? You clearly hate _me,_ though.”

Johnson rolled his eyes extravagantly, but Keenan didn’t miss that his gaze never made it anywhere near Keenan’s own. “Don’t be ridiculous, you are annoying and inconvenient.”

“Well,” he said, feeling foolish. He could understand that much, an alpha teammate you were compatible with would be inconvenient. Of course, he could say the same thing about Johnson, and he had never taken it out on the man himself. “You are always mad around me.”

“That’s not your fault,” Johnson said quietly, like it hurt to admit, then added a bit cattily, “Mostly.”

Keenan let it go, conscious of the way Johnson was spoiling for a fight, even if he didn’t understand why. “So what emotion then?”

Johnson gave him a pitying look. It was always like that; he only seemed to look at Keenan to attack him. Keenan bit back a cutting comment and was rewarded with a direct answer, “It’s not emotion, it’s high compatibility.”

Keenan frowned at him, dubious. “High compatibility? I don’t really think so... I don’t even...”

“We are a true pair,” Johnson interrupted and he was honest, Keenan could read it loud and clear, even if his lowered eyes and hunched posture hadn’t illustrated how vulnerable the confession left him feeling. He believed what he was saying, was resigned to it.

But that didn’t make it true.

“That’s not possible,” he explained calmly. He wasn’t worried, this was obviously some notion Johnson had cooked up in his head, possibly during heat, or maybe just to explain to himself why it was okay to sleep with Keenan. “I’m straight," he said and braced himself for the disbelief he usually encountered. But it was true. Keenan hadn't wanted it into being because he subconsciously feared men, or found his protective alpha instincts more strongly stimulated by smaller mates. It was just the way he was.

Johnson frowned, thoughtful, but not upset as far Keenan could see –which he'd have been if someone he'd slept with had suddenly told him he wasn't attracted to them. He was normally too certain of everything for anything like puzzlement, but Keenan's unusual sexual preferences had done the trick. “You...” He licked his lips, swallowing. “You don’t...”

“No,” Keenan confirmed.

“But you did with me,” Johnson said, looking beyond him. Then he met his eyes again and for the first time he wasn’t blazing with fury or resentment, his blue eyes shone in the dimly lit room. “Well, I guess that only shows that I am right,” he said quietly. He shook his head, breaking their gaze like it had been nothing, and Keenan kept looking back, eyes following his mobile lips more than his words for a moment. “I didn’t want to believe it. I ignored all the signs, and then I gave you that stupid kiss and... I just knew.”

And then, of course, the words filtered in. “You just _knew?_ ” he repeated. “This is not a telenovela, Johnson.”

Johnson didn’t get angry then either, instead countering almost dryly, “I really wouldn’t know. I’m more of a sports channel kind of guy.”

“There’s tests and, well, signs," Keenan said, realising he was repeating what Johnson had said. "What are these signs you ignored?”

There was a pause and then: “Instant connection,” Johnson admitted. He looked almost abashed.

“Instant connection?” Keenan echoed. “What are you talking about? We didn’t talk for weeks!”

“Exactly, and then we got on the ice together and...” He shook his head. “We didn’t need to. It was... That’s crazy.”

“That’s just a normal scent thing, we can tell where the other is so...”

“Avali," Johnson interrupted, and if Keenan had been a sticker for protocol... But he wasn't, and it'd be stupid anyway, after what they had shared. Even if it had only been a one-night-stand. "I have played with alphas before. A _lot._ There were lots of alphas in little leagues and in my old teams. I played a little better with them, the same edge I got with a beta if I got along with them. It mostly just meant I played about the same because I never got on with alphas that well.”

It was true, the junior hockey leagues were chock-full of alphas –kids whose parents hoped would pour their aggression into an organized sport and keep away from school fights and gangs— who would then grow up and drop it. Keenan recognized Johnson’s description, too, because it was exactly how _he_ played with other alphas, sometimes getting spikes when they were really focused, but often too conscious of the competition to best _each_ other to make the connection really work for them as teammates. It was easier if they were older, like Sven, and Keenan felt it was okay to learn from them and they showed they respected Keenan abilities in turn.

With Sven in particular, who was laid back to the point where betas sometimes wouldn't believe he was an alpha, Keenan found scent useful. But it was nothing to how he played with Johnson. Even when they weren’t on speaking terms, they got each other, a natural give and take that was like putting an atomic battery on the great connection of good lines mates --and good linemates could sometimes seem to read your mind, with enough good body language reading and practice. Johnson was right; it had been fine when they hadn't been talking, and when they had been shouting at each other about hockey, but then... “Is that why it isn’t working now? Because you are angry at me?”

Johnson nodded. “Probably. I wasn’t trying, exactly, but I didn’t want… Well, I wanted some distance.”

“But you can’t get a good read off me when you’re closed off,” Keenan deduced.

Johnson shook his head. "I read you fine, _you_ can't read me."

Keenan stared at him. It wasn't any omega that could pass himself off as a beta, but to be able to actually ward off an alpha actively attempting to read him... He had never heard of such a thing. For some reason, some pieces fell into place then. "If it's true..." he murmured, almost to himself but watching Johnson as if he could see the answer on his face, "that's why you went into heat. Because of me."

And for once, he caught Johnson by surprise, enough that he couldn't quite hide his shock on time. He quickly looked away. "So now you believe me?"

"I believe we're compatible," Keenan conceded. That much was hard to deny and it explained why he'd been so affected by Johnson's heat despite not being attracted to him.

"Great," Johnson said, sounding like he found it everything but. "Well, just don't touch me. Off-ice, I mean, if you somehow manage to touch bare skin on the ice I'm happy to bear the consequences." Keenan glanced up at him in surprise, and Johnson sneered at him. "What? Hadn't you noticed hockey is my priority?"

"No, I mean, that's not it. You aren't mad that I set off your heat."

"Because you didn't?" Johnson asked, voice dripping disdain and eyes narrowed. He wasn't bothering keeping the acid off his scent, either. "I touched you!"

"Yes, but..." Keenan trailed off. "You didn't know we were... that compatible," he finished lamely.

"I knew we were compatible," Johnson insisted calmly, then just as calmly admitted, "it was a stupid thing to do. In fact, I should probably apologize."

Keenan waited, but no apology seemed forthcoming. He tilted his head at Johnson, expectant, and Johnson snorted, lips curving to catch the rest of his laugh. It was probably the first time he had shown anything but irritation in front of Keenan, and he looked... he smelled intense for a second, the amusement like an extra depth to his natural sweetness, and by the time his lips parted to speak, Keenan was already smiling back.

"I'm sorry," he said finally, not quite seriously. "I promise to keep my hands to myself from now on," he added, and he was in earnest, but there was something in his words that didn't quite match. Keenan shook off the strangeness and made himself nod.

"So we are back in the game?"

"Let's get in early and try it out," Johnson offered.

**&**

**Cartwright**

Carry thought the conversation would get them back to normal, but when he opened up his mind --a relief, really, it was a bit like holding your breath-- it was more like a revelation. He didn't know whether the knowledge had affected the connection, for lack of a better word. But _something_ had given. It had been unusually good before for an alpha he didn't talk to, but he had chalked that up to their inherent compatibility as players. Now he wasn't just getting Avali's location for passes, he could _feel_ Avali move his arms as an echo of his own movements. The way his head felt stuffed and fuzzy, he thought he might be getting some echo of sound, too. It wasn’t till Avali, --after a smooth sideway pass Carry had slotted into the empty goal without ever turning towards his teammate-- crashed into the boards and bounced right off his feet and Carry, standing still after scoring, had to close his eyes and stand very still till the dizziness passed that he understood it wasn’t speed blurring his vision. For a moment, he’d seen himself through Avali’s eyes, and the goal, too, through both their eyes at once.

The first thing he heard was Avali groaning and he was by his side without conscious thought. Avali took the gloved hand he offered and let him haul him to his feet, not even attempting to do it himself. He looked more winded than hurt and... Carry could feel worry twisting in his gut. He concentrated and pulled back, thinking of the ice under his feet, distancing himself in body and mind. He could still smell Avali, a little sour in his worry, but the actual feelings had faded into the background. "Fuck," he murmured and took his hand back even though the gloves offered plenty of protection from accidental contact, "sorry."

"What happened?" Avali asked, and Carry opened his eyes to find him standing still like his balance wasn't completely restored. And he had to guess, because he couldn’t _tell_ anymore. For a moment, he regretted the loss.

"We... we were too close,” he explained, feeling foolish because what he really meant was ‘ _I let us get too close’_ and there was no good excuse for that if Avali asked him why. “I was seeing what you were seeing." Avali's eyes widened in horror. Of course. "Just little flashes," Carry promised, not sure how to fix it. "It... I've pulled back."

Avali wasn’t comforted, and Carry couldn’t blame him. It was crazy. Psychs could do stuff like that, not normal people. And there was a reason Psychs were recruited by the government and controlled so they wouldn’t abuse their power.

"But how were you doing it?” Avali demanded “That's... that's not _empathy_. That's fucking telepathy!"

"I've never done it before," he explained, and his voice went higher than he expected. He could fight his instinct to submit, but it wore him down more to have an alpha shouting at him, truly upset with him. Not to a point where he couldn't take it, but more than it would have if a beta or an omega had. Especially if he was upset, and he was. Avali was happy to keep the sex a secret, sure, but this wasn’t Carry’s reputation at stake. He couldn’t even argue that there wasn’t logic behind the laws that regulated the lives of those who could invisibly and without detection get hold of what other people thought, or, if powerful enough, even _change it_. He had never questioned them before, and it had never occurred to him to consider than Psychs didn’t have any more choice than omegas until this very moment. _Thoughts_ , he reminded himself. And either Avali was really dumb or Carry wasn’t that good a Psych, which made a lot more sense when he’d failed the tests all children were put through to check just that. The government agencies with mindreaders at their disposals probably couldn’t be fooled by schoolkids. And Avali was listening, the way he always did, his attention wholeheartedly focused on Carry. Maybe it was the pull of attraction that got him such undivided focus, but it wasn’t the time to be squeamish. He needed Avali listening.

"And, anyway, telepathy is thoughts. I have no idea what you are thinking," he assured Avali and it was a lie, even having pulled back, his eyes still knew to look for the shoulders lowering and hands unclenching in the exact moment in which the muscles unwound. But that wasn't thoughts, not really, that was... body language. He was always more aware of people he was attracted to, that was all. And they were a one true pair; people said it was magical. Maybe it was true. And Avali wanted to believe him, he realised, and made a quick pass to his teammate. "What happened to you?"

"I..." Avali started, then frowned but he answered normally, intense like he always was on the ice but no longer upset. "I don't know, my vision blurred? I wasn't even moving that fast..."

"Maybe you were getting something, too,” Carry said, “like... a sense of my posture."

Avali shook his head. "No, nothing like that. That's not... I'm a really poor empath to start with." Then he frowned again, and this time Carry wished his teammate didn’t feel the need to try to drill holes through him with his eyes. "Maybe you were projecting."

"What?" he snapped, almost shouting. He had bite down for a moment before he could make himself speak with derision instead of terror. "Projecting? Do you think I'm able to project and I haven't been recruited?"

Avali stared at him. "I think you have been recruited," he said, looking at him in wonder. "You are here, aren't you?"

For a long moment Carry stared at him. Then the words made sense. Somewhat. "Are you saying I _cheated_ to get into the league?" he asked, and the sudden anger left him so disorientated that his voice came out completely flat.

"What? No!" Avali replied, looking disgusted, like Carry had accused _him_ of a crime. "I'm saying you wouldn't want to leave hockey, you could have lied about how much you can do."

Carry's anger dissipated like water hitting scalding pavement. It was a fair assessment, if he had needed to lie to keep hockey, he would have. If he could have, which... Only he hadn’t, he hadn’t needed to and so he hadn’t done it. "I didn't lie,” he told Avali slowly, letting his grip on his emotions loosen enough Avali should have picked up his scent. “I'm not lying,” he insisted, hoping he _smelled_ truthful. “I almost fell down, too."

"Oh, fuck, that could literally lose us a game," Avali said, sounding worse than he had when he thought Carry was reading his mind. Now, Carry hated losing, but he still thought Avali was being a little short-sighted. But if it got him to forget about Carry's slightly too advanced psychic perception...

"We should figure out how much we need to play well without overdoing it," he decided, and Avali didn’t demand to be given a vote. It was a little odd to plan to use low level psyonics in a game instead of simply taking whatever improved perceptions came his way. It sounded almost like... but Avali was immediately on board and, after all, this were the same skills that had just made one of them crash into the boards and left them both out of it. They had to make up for it somehow. And it wasn’t telepathy, it was nothing like what a Psych could do. And anyway, Psychs that could only manage to get a read off their highly compatible mates wouldn’t have been much use to anybody.

"How do you pull back?" Avali asked, pushing his helmet up a bit. It was early and he had dark circles under his startlingly intense dark eyes.

Carry tore his gaze away, shrugging. "I don't really know... It's like not thinking about someone. That's why it probably came on so strong right now, since we talked and all I don't mind thinking about you so much."

Avali snorted. "I'm honoured."

Carry had to admit it didn't sound great, but he hadn't meant to give offense. He darted a quick look at Avali’s sceptical face. "You should be. Obviously it doesn't happen often that I don't mind someone enough to knock them off their arse with my mind."

Avali laughed, rich and deep and, to Carry's misguided ears, like the crashing of the tide: wild and irresistible. And deadly. He'd always had an easy time forgetting that as a child.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday to me in an hour, hope you enjoy and thanks for the comments and kudos :) Feel free to tell me what work/doesn't!


	11. The Unbearable Weight of Secrets

**&**

**Keenan**

He'd let the one true pair thing stand because it didn’t really matter what they called it; they were compatible. He'd never understood how a little percentage point could make such a huge difference. If it worked anything like sexual attraction, it seemed to him it should have been progressive. This either ‘yes absolutely’ or ‘absolutely no way’ scale felt... wrong. So maybe he and Johnson were above 50 percent compatible or whatever bodies thought was enough for a good combo, but how was that different than when he thought a woman had gorgeous eyes or a perfect arse?  It was just _one_ thing; it couldn't determine everything.

People got bonded to omegas they weren't compatible with and made their marriages last. Not to mention betas, who managed relationships without any scenting ability beyond detecting smoke, or predicting what was being cooked for dinner. He didn't believe in destiny and he definitely didn't believe his hormones got a deciding vote in his life.

Then he'd spent what felt like hours on the ice with Johnson trying to figure out how much was too much telepathy and getting told off for using the word. Frostily at first, then progressing into annoyed before edging into grudging acceptance when Johnson couldn’t give him a decent reason _not to_. Besides accuracy, that’s it.

‘Telepathy’ wasn’t accurate, and neither was ‘compatible’, but the names didn’t really matter. It was real, and it wasn’t just scent. Keenan didn’t need to know the percentages and number and whatever else you could measure, he didn’t need to be told what was happening to him was rare. He had been with the Flames six years and played hockey all his life, Johnson was right: scent didn’t do this much. But maybe it was Johnson himself, half psychic, half insane about hockey. Keenan could say without a doubt that Johnson was one of the most intense players he'd ever met, and he’d have counted himself up there, too. So maybe he didn’t _like_ Johnson, and he certainly didn’t think he was attractive, but... it meant something, that they were the same about something so fundamental, about hockey.

And Keenan couldn’t deny it made his breath catch to see up close how methodical he was about it. He'd go through the same exercise five times or twenty, sometimes stopping suddenly and shifting his angle or grip minutely before resuming like he had no concern for the sweat running down his face or the ache he must have been feeling after fifteen fast shots at goal without pause.

He was good at psych, too, even if he really hadn't lied about having a gift he'd hidden from the government so he wouldn't be pushed into one of the life-saving professions where the psychically gifted could make a real difference. Johnson must have received the basic training provided in schools to the general population, but, unlike Keenan, who had failed again and again at guessing if his classmates were happy or sad, he had picked up some tricks. After Keenan’s fall, he'd sat down with his eyes closed for five minutes and when he’d got up he’d promised he definitely had it under control. It seemed insane to Keenan that he could actually create a shield or filter or whatever in that time, but he had to admit it'd worked. His vision and balance were back to normal and Johnson still knew where he was no matter how fast he skated in a circle around him. He himself had an approximate idea, unless Johnson meant for him to catch a pass, when suddenly he could feel it. He knew he was wanted, somehow. Was that how an alpha knew his omega needed him? Did that mean it would get more intense if they bonded?

He caught himself before the thought could go any further. _Bonded?!_ What the hell was he thinking? He wasn't even really attracted to Johnson, hormones be damned. He had never been attracted to guys before, and it wasn't for lack of offers. He just hadn't. It didn't make sense for him to suddenly feel like this. Even if Johnson's hockey was beautiful, even if playing with him was like rediscovering the sport all over again. It just wasn’t in Keenan, if he could have… well, he hadn’t spent most of his career in a sport where size was of the essence and therefore men dominated without forming some strong bonds with other men. And, unlike Johnson  —who had good reason to be sceptic— most of his friends hadn’t really seen why Keenan couldn’t manage to cross the line between friends and lovers with them. Betas didn’t really expect forever from an alpha but that seemed to mean that they _did_ expect sometimes. It wasn’t easy being the guy who didn’t do sometimes, and off the ice, easy was Keenan’s favourite thing in the world. So if he could have, why wouldn’t it have happened before now? Obviously mind altering hormones were required. He only wished the alterations to his mind would go away with the heat hormones.

Johnson skated up to him, panting, and Keenan only looked up at the clock on the wall so he wouldn't stare at his sweaty teammate. It had been two hours. Morning skate —optional as it was— was about to start.

Johnson took his helmet off, leaving his blond hair a sweaty half spiked mess. There went Keenan’s gaze, getting snagged like a fish on irresistible bait.

"We can't stay," Johnson told him.

And Keenan looked at him oddly. "I had no intention of staying," he assured him, smiling, a little high off the adrenaline and the sheer virtuosity of some of the plays they'd pulled off. "You just gave me the work out of a lifetime."

Only the way Johnson's eyes slid away made Keenan realise it might have sounded a little... "There's no way they wouldn't notice how much better our playing just got," Johnson explained.

"Oh," Keenan said. He'd been so excited about it that it hadn't occurred to him anybody could react otherwise. "But it's a good thing."

Johnson glared at him. “Do you have any idea what a reporter will do with your _good thing_?" he demanded, low enough, but angry.

In the few seconds it took Keenan to process that Johnson knew about those articles coach had talked about and to wonder when he’d found out, the door of the rink opened and Santiago stepped in with an unholy whoop. Rookies, Keenan thought, both fond and annoyed, and caught Johnson’s lips curving in amusement.

There was nothing for it, though. They would have to talk later.

 

&

**Cartwright**

He was tired —after talking to Avali he hadn't been able to fall asleep till midnight— but he thought it was more than sleep deprivation making him feel all floaty. It had been the best practice of his life, hands down. Hell, the best hockey of his life even with an empty goal. And he hadn't even felt that odd around Avali when he'd opened up his mind. They were going to have to come back for afternoon practice and he didn't know how they'd hide their 200% improvement from their coaches and teammates. But he knew he wouldn't figure anything out if he didn't get some sleep first; he wasn't the stupid thirteen-year-old who thought sneaking out and practicing wrist shots till 2 am would get him far in hockey.

Public transport was busy, but he still found himself a seat to collapse into for the five stops to his neighbourhood. Once there it took just two blocks of walking to get to his flat —money did buy solitude, if not happiness— and he showered quickly before face planting on top of the covers. Even as tired as he was, he couldn't quite stop seeing what had just happened: Avali's sharp, economical passes... As if he knew perfectly well where he'd send them without looking, yes, but also like his _arms_ knew how to move the stick to accomplish it too, and his feet could find the perfect position to allow his body the shot. And all because Carry was —for the first time since they'd met and he'd retreated as far back into his own mind as he could manage— letting him see. It bothered him still, the same way it had driven him mad that he couldn't keep his scent muffled enough for Avali not to read his strongest emotions off it. But it was a bit of a relief as well; he didn't want to have to pull back all the time, and he _liked_ being in control. Because he had no doubt about that: Avali and him were playing together like two pieces of a whole —he shoved the unwanted image of their intertwined bodies away—, but it was Carry who was coordinating. It was, secretly, how he'd wanted to play all his life: not simply with his own body, but being able to tell others what their strengths were, what they needed to improve. And here was a man he disliked intensely, _an alpha,_ not just older than him but also a veteran in the team, and he was just letting him do it like it was nothing... And even the possibility that Carry was psychically capable of far more than an ordinary person should be hadn’t faced Avali enough to take it back. It was heady, that kind of... trust. That’s what it was, what else to call it when someone let you so close to their _mind_ knowing you had all the control and they had none?

He woke up sweaty and hard, his own hand already having given in and wrapped around his cock. He groaned, vaguely confused because a second earlier he could have sworn he wasn't alone. But there was nobody in his bedroom, of course. There was nobody fucking him. It had felt so good... almost too much and not enough at once, and his hand wasn’t really doing the job now, even though he was already slicking it with precome. He clenched, aching almost with the emptiness of it, and realised with mixed gratitude and disappointment, that he wasn’t wet. It wasn’t heat.

He switched hands and used his slick fingers to push inside himself. It was almost like a punch, too much at once, both pleasure and pain and he arched there, taking it all in, desperate for more but knowing he couldn’t take it yet. And then his body eased and the two fingers in sank in to the knuckles, making him convulse around them as they pushed against his prostate. His right hand was clumsily stripping his cock, feeling strange but in a good way because it was almost like he wasn’t alone, like someone else… Suddenly and irrepressible Avali’s eyes came to him, dark like pools, deeper than… Carry had wanted to drown himself in them, in Avali, to be taken whole and devoured... And Avali's cock, too big at first and then just... He added another finger… filling him up till there was no space left, no part of him untouched or unknown. The slickness of his own body responding to a need so primal, so basic, that it defied words. He remembered the rough shoves, steady and hard from a body at its prime, capable of as much as a body could ever do. And he remembered Avali on top of him, hard muscles all over and skin soft with sweat. He knew there had been words too, but he had been in no state to listen, all that remained to him was the tone. Reverent, needy, worshipful. Avali didn't really know him, but what his voice had said... Carry wanted it. He pushed a fourth finger in, holding his cock for a moment before he could concentrate enough to start moving it again and playing with the head, pulling back the foreskin. And then he was submerged in the memory once again with the poor substitute of his fingers, but if he concentrated he could bring back the scent too. Avali’s body didn't really smell like sunlight on sand, he knew it was his brain leading him to a compatible mate, but it felt real to Carry. So real that when he pushed his fingers at just the right angle and his orgasm hit, he could almost hear the waves.

 


	12. Open and Waiting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter, hope you like! :)

&

**Keenan**

By the time afternoon practice rolled around it had only been a few hours since he'd last seen Johnson but he didn't know what to expect. Who to expect. Would it be the closed off hockey prodigy or the guy who had moved him on the ice as if he was a piece on a Go board? Keenan couldn't say the Johnson he'd met on the ice that morning was his favourite person or anything, but he was a distinct improvement over the guy who could take his cock like a champ one minute and become cold and condescending the next.

Of course Johnson surprised him. Johnson was basically an impossibility after another anyway, so why not? He made a point of meeting Keenan's eyes as soon as he'd entered the changing room —Keenan had not been able to keep himself from looking— and nodded at him like they had some type of understanding. If they did, Johnson was the only one who understood it. Keenan had not responded fast enough, but either his scent or his body language had been enough for Johnson to turn away, smelling sweet as usual with a hint of his on-ice determination.

He had taken the seat next to Sven and asked, too formally, "Can I make a suggestion about today's practice?" Sven had turned to give him a look, but gestured for him to go on. "Avali and I practiced together this morning, we think we've got it under control but we are having another go at it tomorrow morning." This was the first Keenan had heard of this, which didn't break protocol as much as smash it along with good manners, but he kept quiet. "So if you change the lines, we could try playing against each other instead, see how that holds."

Sven seemed a little overwhelmed. "Well, if coach okays it..."

"You don't think it's a good idea?" Johnson asked, almost earnestly. His scent, which Sven could naturally also read, spiked with worry. But the art of it was in his expression, which wasn't alarmed but abashed, like his favourite teacher had shot down his idea. It was genius, of a kind, he couldn't keep them from scenting him without looking suspicious, so he was using his scent to throw Sven off.

If Keenan hadn't known better... but no, that wasn't true. He couldn't think of a single instance of Johnson being calm enough around him to play tricks. He had seen and smelled him furious, and out of his mind with lust, and so uncomfortable it was like he had been overbaked. And so repressed he almost passed as a beta –which itself gave away that he was upset. But the one thing it had never been had been mild. Now he was concerned, just as concerned as he was letting Sven see –just like anybody would expect of a relatively new player trying to direct his captain— but there was no urgency to it. It almost seemed faked. It couldn’t be, nobody could fake scent, but it didn’t seem like the Johnson Keenan knew.

Sven shrugged, and backtracked. “No, definitely, I’ll talk to him,” he promised, and took advantage of having to lace up his skates to look away from Johnson’s face. Johnson didn't smile or give any sign that he'd just manipulated his captain –his scent was simply sweet again, pleased. He thanked Sven and went to get into his own kit to get changed.

Keenan was bad at the stuff but he could tell the moment he stepped on the ice that he'd closed up his mind as much as he possibly could. He could still tell where Johnson was better than anybody except Sven but that was it. Compared to that morning, it felt like a loss, or —at least— a hell of a handicap.

He got in place and listened to coach's instructions, even though it wasn't anything new, and other than his issues with Johnson there wasn't anything coach thought Keenan himself had to work on during a scrimmage.

Patel wasn't quite on his level, —at least when it came to face-offs— so he won, but he hadn't counted on the fact that everybody on the team could have probably predicted this outcome. Johnson and Bauer were ready to intercept so he passed it back to Thomas, who had enough space to go around but then there was Santiago —grinning fiercely on top of his six feet eight— and Thomas' return pass was easily scooped up by the waiting Bauer. Keenan a spared a moment of surprise that it hadn't been Johnson before he pushed himself forward to try to get the puck back. He clashed almost violently against Molierre playing opposite defence but luckily Molierre was an old timer and he took hold of Keenan before both of them could go flying. By then, Diego had come to the rescue; he had the puck.

He wasn't Johnson but he was fast and he was halfway down the ice, Molierre still on the wrong side but closing in. Keenan pushed himself, avoiding Santiago's bulk by a hair-breadth's and getting between his teammates just long enough for Diego to shoot. Sven stopped it, of course, not even Keenan's enhanced perception of his position could make up for Sven's impossible reflexes and years of experience. He was not captain for nothing and the sole reason both Diego and Keenan —the best shooters alongside Johnson— were playing against him. Diego didn't even pause, going for the rebound Sven hadn't kept back, and Keenan saw his chance, but of course Molierre had realised first that he wasn't fast enough to stop Diego and he was already positioned between Keenan himself and the goal. Keenan disengaged, skating back and Diego passed it to him. Like he knew Keenan would be there. It wasn't like that morning, but it felt _great_. He adjusted his angle, evading Santiago and shooting for Sven's upper left, where his weak shoulder left him slightly more exposed. It went in. He was going to take some ribbing for taking the easy out that was his teammate’s never quite recovered arm, but it wasn't like _Sven_ wasn't aware that he had to guard that side with extra seal.

Patel took the next face-off by virtue of cheating like a champ —he shot Johnson a glance right before, and Keenan stupidly followed his gaze, maybe because his gaze always wanted to wander to Johnson, anyway. The pass was to Bauer, of course, since Keenan's eyes were on his other side. And off they were, Johnson disappearing past their offense and zooming around Schvills right on time to catch the pass off Patel and smack it into goal. He didn't have as much power at his disposal as a bigger player, but he made up for it in precision. After it went in, Keenan, who'd been too slow to even attempt to intercept him, found a moment to watch him grin in triumph, not an ounce of frustration that he had just been scored on.

The practice ended with a 7-8 because it was practice and everybody was eager to score when being scored on didn't mean losing a real game. Not that ribbing rights weren't valued, but a defensemen didn't get many chances to shoot in a real game and they took the chance when they had it.

Keenan wasn't sure about approaching Johnson with the guys around, even though Johnson hadn't made an effort to keep their morning practice secret, so he texted him instead. Johnson's phone beeped across the room and he glanced towards his open locker curiously before getting up, half in uniform but barefoot and going to get it.

Keenan's view was suddenly blocked by the bulk of Sven's body and he looked up to see his captain’s raised eyebrows. He swallowed, but kept quiet. It'd have been pretty stupid to deny he'd been staring when Sven could probably smell his embarrassment. "How did it go this morning?" Sven asked, good-naturedly, but Keenan knew when he was being let off easy.

"Great!" he said, sincerely. "Johnson just... we, we are really in sync again. But we want to do it again, see if it's really okay, before..." He waved his hand around as if to indicate the rest of the team.

“Does he know?” Sven asked quietly, and Keenan froze. He had promised Johnson, but… Except he didn’t need to lie.

He had told Sven before that he wasn't interested in Johnson, that he wasn't interested in men. And it had been true. And now... now he looked like an idiot. But he owed Johnson this much, to protect him as far as he could manage. A little embarrassment in front of Sven was nothing to what Johnson could lose.

He shrugged, looking away. “He has a nose, doesn’t he?”

Sven was quiet for long enough that he looked up, but Sven’s eyes were on Bauer, who for some reason had sat in the corner only a meter away from Keenan to dry up. “I’ll talk to you later,” Sven promised, shooting Keenan a sharp look to counteract his mild tone.

Keenan didn’t care. He’d take the break even knowing it wouldn’t last.

 

&

**Cartwright**

Carry almost laughed aloud when he saw the text message was from Avali. But then the reason for the discretion landed on him and any amusement he might felt left him fasters than rats abandon a sinking ship: Avali didn’t want people to get the wrong impression from them being friendly with each other. And people would, of course, it wasn’t like Carry didn’t have a search alert to his name, or an agent who’d called him in a panic as soon as the stupid rumours had emerged. It seemed that his lack of amazing on-ice miracles during his initial period with the Flames was already making tongues wag about Carry’s presentation instead.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, much less hurt –but it wore him down. It just did. The constant expectation that he couldn’t make it professionally despite everybody’s willingness to admit his talent had enraged him enough when he’d been a kid to push him to prove all of them wrong. But he wasn’t a kid anymore, he felt jaded enough to think he wasn’t even a young guy, not in his head. He didn’t want to prove them wrong, he wanted them _to be_ wrong, and as much as he didn’t doubt his hockey, he was starting to question his ability to put up with other people.

And if anybody found out about Avali, that’d be it, he wouldn’t even have the option of pretending he didn’t see the articles or hear the rumours. It’d be over. The team couldn’t legally ask Carry to keep it in his pants, but they had a clause regarding bringing the club into disrepute. It wouldn’t matter if there was a double standard for omegas; if Carry’s actions caused a scandal, they’d be justified in kicking him to the curb.

He couldn’t even think about that life. The month before the Flames had snapped him up had been so profoundly unbearable that he had done everything in his power _not_ to think, not to live, really. He’d have been out clubbing every night, too, finally giving into the curiosity he’d had to repress all his life, but he’d have hope. If he didn’t… if he lost hockey for good…

So it was good Avali was careful and no reason to be offended. Carry texted him that he’d see him the next morning, he’d already talked to coach about their early morning session and got permission to skip morning skate  with the team, even though they had a game the next evening. Two sessions together was nothing, but Carry knew how to trust himself when it came to the ice. It was simply physics, something he could always control or –at least understand—and that wouldn’t betray him unless _he_ somehow failed. He had missed shots, of course, and fell, and a few times he’d been hurt by others, too. But he hadn’t really failed. Failure was when you didn’t live up to your own abilities, when you didn’t work hard enough and that left you with a weak spot when it came time to play. Carry didn’t step on the ice unprepared, so he couldn’t fail.

His phone beeped, pulling him out of his thoughts. He had almost missed his stop, he realised, standing up with a jerk and following his more aware fellow passengers out of the train. He was thinking about borrowing a hoverboard to make the trip all the way to his place when he popped his phone open and saw the text was from Avali.

[ _Thanks for asking me._ ] For a moment he didn’t understand, then he realised Avali was being sarcastic.

[ _So you don’t want to be able to play the Gels?_ ]

[ _I want u 2 fucking ask me before talking 2 coach about my training_ ]

[It was your idea to fix our play! We obviously weren’t done, were we?]

[ _ASK ME]_

[FINE. AVALI, DO YOU WANT TO HAVE ANOTHER MORNING PRACTICE TOMORROW?]

[Sure. I’ll meet u at 5.]

Carry slammed the phone shut too hard, and winced. But it didn’t make him any less annoyed.  How could he be attracted to someone who _texted_ irritatingly?

Thinking about his grievances against the man distracted him through the walk home, but he still thought of Avali when he got in the shower and started playing with cock head. He didn’t try to, of course, he went for his usual fantasy –the muscled giant shoving his dick into him hard and fast—but found his imaginary lover had taken slightly less gargantuan proportions and that there was a faint smell of salt in the air even though they were nowhere near an ocean and the water was recycled besides. But still, it got the job done and he was relaxed enough to go to bed early and wake up on time for that goddamned practice. Hockey had to come first, the discomfort of knowing he was still turned on by that jerk was nothing to the time he’d pulled a ligament skating, or the hit onto the boards that had knocked out about half his teeth. He could deal, if it meant winning. And as long as Avali didn’t know, it couldn’t be used against him.

 

&

 

Avali was early, which was good. Except it made Carry feel like he was late. It didn’t help that he had walked into the changing room and found Avali shirtless, —short hair curling from his morning shower, expression a little dazed—and had to make an excuse to go into the showers to calm himself enough to get changed. By the time he got back Avali was lacing up his skates and he could definitely feel the tension between them because he almost stumbled getting to his feet. “I’ll just go warm up some.”

Carry had let him go without a word, but with growing suspicion that Avali had planned to get changed before he arrived to avoid the awkwardness. Not that it mattered, if he had, he’d utterly failed at timing and his good intentions were not much good to either of them.

It was hard to keep hold of his annoyance when he’d come out and found Avali circling the rink, smoothly taking the curves with crosses like he knew no other way to move his feet than to slide them across frozen water. His posture was erect, highlighting the core strength of him, and he was using every muscle and bone to its utmost advantage –someone who knew his own power and didn’t spend it in excess. He was stunning.

 _Fuck_ , Carry thought. He couldn’t even tell if what he was feeling was lust or admiration, but what did it matter? He needed to get over it and onto the ice anyway. He did it, letting Avali skate by the door before he took to the ice himself. It was like magic, every time, his muscles unwinding even as they strained with effort, his mind clearing of any concerns except the puck. But there were no pucks or sticks on this ice yet: he could just fly on his feet with the joy he had learned when he’d barely been able to walk.

By the time he was conscious of time again, Avali wasn’t in front of him anymore. He glanced around and found him entering the rink again with the puck and sticks. He had been so lost in the feeling he hadn’t even noticed his scent was gone, but now it hit him like an open palm to the face. His mind was wide open and he was totally relaxed and the scent penetrated him, going deeper into his brain that it ever had before. He almost crashed to a stop against the boards with the intensity of emotion: safety, and family, and joy. All surrounded by the smell of the ocean and the fried potato sticks that he’d insisted to have on every meal during his holidays.

Avali was at his side almost too fast to process and Carry almost cringed –afraid he’d try and touch him—but Avali didn’t reach out, he gripped the railing next to Carry and asked, “What happened?”

“I was…” Carry swallowed with difficulty, his mouth was dry. “I was too open, and I… it was just a memory,” he said. The last thing he wanted was for Avali to know he reminded Carry of his childhood home.

“Um… your memory?” Avali asked with enough uncertainty that Carry just sighed.

“I told you, I can’t read your mind.” He shoved hard and straightened. “I will be more careful,” he added and extended a hand for one of the sticks. Avali passed it over and he saw it was the right size and type. He looked up and found Avali standing there, watching him attentively. “I’m fine, really.”

The alpha nodded. “Okay, just…” He shook his head. “Don’t knock me out with your brain, okay?” he asked with a small smile.

And Carry found himself rolling his eyes at him and promising, “I’ll do my best.”

 


	13. Truth Leading to a Logical Solution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think you'll like this ;p

&

**Keenan**

After a performance like that, Keenan wasn’t surprised Sven wanted to talk. He had to let Keenan speak to the press, who wouldn’t take ‘I got hit really hard' as an excuse unless someone else had to say it for you because you were being rushed to the hospital, but he wouldn’t wait much longer. He didn't think he'd done too badly, for someone who was terrified of being pointed at and accused of cheating. But apparently everybody had expected the great Keenan Avali to be capable of this much. They thought the whole thing was somehow his idea and due to his command abilities, which it made it hard to answer even the simplest questions without snapping at them that hockey was a team sport and no single player could win a game. And it wasn't like Johnson hadn't explained while they practiced, except that what he had needed to explain to Keenan and what any other person needed explained were vastly different things. But Johnson had made it very clear that he didn't want to be on the spotlight alone, he could accept praise as part of a line or a whole team, but he didn't want even positive attention called to himself. Having read some of Johnson's press, Keenan could see why: when it came to Johnson the news never _stayed_ good. Somehow it always came down to him being an omega, either because he was using it –parental instincts to create good team dynamics? Had these people ever talked to Johnson?— or because he was overcoming them.

Once they were alone, Sven had no reason to be coy. “So you are sleeping with him.”

Keenan flinched. “No!”

Sven raised his eyebrows in polite incredulity.

“I want to, okay?” he gritted out, hoping the admission would distract Sven from what, Keenan realised, he’d sworn to Johnson he wouldn’t talk about. But it wasn’t like Sven had ever believed Keenan when he said he was only attracted to women. Keenan had never understood why other people felt they knew his sexuality better than him, or why they assumed he’d lie about it to be interesting. He was happy to admit he was a stubborn bastard, but he wasn’t _contrary_. He had never wanted to stand out for anything but scoring the most goals, and Sven –of all people—should have known that. But it seemed even his sweetheart of a best friend couldn’t be perfect. “I’m glad you have discovered your love for cock,” said sweetheart said calmly, “But did you miss the part where this guy is _in our team_?”

“Of course not, and I didn’t…” he stopped himself just before he said too much. But was it too much? He was hopelessly confused by both his attraction and Johnson himself, why shouldn’t he talk to Sven about it? He had said he wouldn’t spread rumours, sure, but he would bet his life on the fact that Sven wouldn’t breathe a word of it to anybody. He met his friends’ eyes. “I need you to promise you won’t talk about this. Not to coach, not to Helga, not to the empty night above.”

Sven’s eyes widened in alarm and he raised his hands. “Keenan, come on, man, of course not.”

Keenan didn’t speak, waiting. And Sven sighed, “Not even Helga, not even if you traumatize me with your sexual fantasies.”

He felt like his muscles had melted and let himself flop down on one of the office chairs in the empty office Sven had cornered him into. “They aren’t fantasies.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m not sleeping with him,” Keenan explained, mostly to his own hands. “But I did. Once. It was…” He stopped, not sure if he didn’t have the words or there weren’t words at all. It had been an accident, in the sense that they hadn’t planned it, but it hadn’t _felt_ like an accident, or a mistake. Rationally, he knew he and Johnson had nothing in common besides hockey, that they could barely talk, but when their bodies had met... Met and almost melted into each other…

“Heat,” Sven said quietly. “He went into heat. Because you are compatible.”

Keenan’s head snapped up. “What? How…?”

Sven frowned at him. “Why else did you think he was so uncomfortable around you from the moment you met?”

“I thought he didn’t like alphas,” Keenan said, defensively.

“He’s been fine with me,” Sven pointed out. “He’s quiet, but he’s not particularly shy. Did you see how he just came over yesterday and sweetly bullied me into getting you guys on different teams?” he asked, sounding amused.

Keenan shrugged. He had more than seen, he had spectated. “If you knew that, then…”

“He obviously _is_ _uncomfortable_ around alphas,” Sven interrupted. “If he needs to talk to me like that to feel like he’s in control… well, I can deal. But if he can do that, I don’t think he has trouble talking to alphas in general. Just you. _I would_ have helped you guys anyway. Especially if you had told me what was going on. Which, by the way, what is going on? How did you _do_ that?”

Keenan couldn’t even pretend not to know what he meant: the game had been almost like magic. He didn’t know how much credit he himself could take, but at least with Sven he didn’t have to lie about it. Except that even to Sven, he couldn’t make it seem like it was all Johnson. Like Johnson was psychically gifted. Sven wasn’t going to say anything, of course, but still, it was different to talk about something that could get Johnson –at worst, reprimanded by management— than to talk about something Keenan suspected might be illegal, like him being a highly skilled psych. “We are compatible, so that helps, but it also messes us up?” he explained. “That’s what was happening. After… _after_ everything was weird. Johnson _thanked me_ for it and left like it had been nothing!” He couldn’t quite keep the indignation out of his voice, out of all the secrets he had ended up keeping for Johnson, that one was the hardest to bear alone because he honestly did not understand what he had done to deserve the treatment he had received. “And he didn’t want it to happen again so he closed up as much as he could and our game went to hell.”

Sven sighed. “Which is why _you don’t sleep with teammates_.”

“I know that!” Keenan snapped. “But you just said it: it was heat.”

“What I want to know is why you were _there_ when he went into heat.”

“I… they put me in a room on the same floor, and it woke me up. I was _careful_ , I took a double dose of suppressants. But I had to go. He is in the team, and he was wandering about like that… He was planning to _go out_ ,” he explained, looking at Sven helplessly. Sven was an alpha, too, he had to understand how dangerous it would have been for Johnson. “It wasn’t _safe_. I couldn’t let him go.”

“So you slept with him to keep him safe,” Sven stated flatly.

“I slept with him because when I tried to stop him from leaving, he kissed me.”

“Oh,” Sven said, looking shocked enough that he stepped away from Keenan, “That’s not…”

Keenan watched the alarmed play on his face in confusion. “What is it?”

“Keenan, that’s not consent,” Sven said, expression tight.

“Really?” he asked, disbelieving. “And how am I supposed to keep back when an omega I’m highly compatible with is _demanding_ …”

“Not him, you!” Sven interrupted, stepping closer and taking hold of his upper arm to shake him. “You didn’t consent.”

Keenan stared at him, then snorted in laughter. “Okay, whatever. It’s not like Johnson could consent, either. You know it’s not legal for omegas to make important decisions when they are in heat.”

“You are always saying you are straight,” Sven pointed out seriously. “And now you are just fine with having slept with a man?”

Keenan got to his feet, forcing his friend to step away. “Did you miss the part about _high compatibility_? I didn’t mean to sleep with him, but it doesn’t mean I’m not straight. It means my brain was drugging me with pheromones to make me want him.”

Sven gapped, mouth trembling open for a moment before closing. “There’s so many things wrong with what you just said… but I guess if you are okay with it... Is he?”

“Johnson?” Keenan asked, surprised. “He was all ‘thanks for the ride, now I can play the next game, which is going to help _you,_ too.”

Sven’s mouth twisted. “Burn much?”

Keenan shrugged, and excused Johnson to Sven even though he’d been angry about it himself for weeks, “I think he was feeling defensive.”

Sven laughed. “And now he’s not.”

“Now he’s forgotten all about it, as far as I can tell,” Keenan explained, hoping Sven couldn’t tell that it hurt him a little. There was no reason to be hurt; it hadn’t even been casual sex, really, since neither of them had planned for even that single time to happen. It wasn’t reasonable of him to expect someone who had slept with him because there was nobody else to remember it warmly. Or to want it again.

Sven was apparently feeling merciful, because he changed topics. “And your hockey together is out of this world.”

Keenan couldn’t repress his smile. “Yes. That was… that was insane, wasn’t it?” He met his friend’s eyes, needing the reassurance that he hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

“If you can do this unbonded…” Sven started to say and Keenan startled.

“What do you mean? Unbonded?” he asked sharply, all the more alarmed because he’d had the thought himself first. “Why would you think about bonding?”

“Because bonds are psychic connections,” Sven explained slowly, “and so it’s whatever you have with Johnson that’s letting you play like you know exactly where he is at all times.”

There wasn’t much room to argue with that, he supposed, even if the idea of being anywhere near a bond with Johnson made his heart race with terror. Sven came back to pat his shoulder. “Come on, man, calm down. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s just… he said we are… not just compatible. Not just…”

“A one true pair,” Sven said, almost reverently.

“Yes,” Keenan’s voice broke on the word, so closed up was his throat. “And I don’t…”

Sven interrupted him with another, harder, pat. “Okay, just let’s not overthink this. _Even_ if he’s right, and let’s be real, the chances he is are very very small, you still don’t have to bond with him or do anything at all. It’s still your choice to make.”

Keenan nodded, repeating the words to himself and letting his head fall forward. Suddenly, those sixty minutes of play time were coming back to make him pay for the way he’d used his body like he didn’t know it had limits. His shoulders ached and he felt heavy and sore all over. He thought he could just sleep on the office where Sven had taken him to talk. It had a couch that didn’t look like it saw much use, but he felt like any horizontal surfaces would worked. But Sven wouldn’t let him, reminding him that he was too tall for it anyway and dragging him to the bus stop. He almost missed his stop anyway, lost in a daze of hazy endorphins.

And then he woke confused and it was still dark in his bedroom, he was laying on top of the covers and fully dressed. He blinked till he realised his phone was lit up. He reached for it. 4.45 and the tiny envelope in the corner of the screen.

He almost closed his eyes again and went back to sleep, but his thumb flipped it open and he clicked through to the message. It was one word only, but it woke him right up:

[Heat] it said, no punctuation or clarification.

 

&

**Cartwright**

He had gone out to celebrate after the game. Even after their captain and their star forward disappeared, Thomas had bullied him into at least one drink. But, high as he was on victory, Carry hadn’t needed that much convincing and he hadn’t turned away the drinks that had come after the first one. It would have been rude to refuse his teammates congratulations –even the ones brightly coloured and very alcoholic in content— but the truth was that he hadn’t _wanted to_. He had earned their praise, and he’d earned the warmth of a team around him, happy and proud. And he’d damn well earned a break from the fucking universe screwing him over. It was lucky, or the practicality of team management, that Thomas and Santiago lived in his apartment complex. Thomas must have felt responsible for inciting Carry to drink because he insisted on walking him right up to his door, which Carry couldn't quite claim hadn't been necessary –after the hot snacks they’d shared, he didn’t even feel that unsteady. For a moment, looking at him in the filtered moonlight through the skylight in his hallway, Carry had considered kissing him. And he’d turned away, thanking the sausage rolls and samosas for tempering his sudden lustfulness. _What was wrong with him?_

Of course if he hadn’t been both tired and tipsy, he might have seen the obvious. Hours later he’d woken up still not completely sober to discover he had come in his sleep, and he was wet. Ready. For something that wasn’t going to happen. But it could. He couldn't forget that; it _could_. If he wanted the burning need that already had him hard again to go away, he only had to... Dammit, he didn't... He almost threw himself right off the bed in his desperation to reach for the dildo, the biggest one in the box. He couldn't pace himself. Not this time. It went in easy, like his body was meant to take it, to take something even bigger, still. Avali had been bigger, he was sure. It didn't feel like enough, not even when he turned the vibrator function on and came on the spot. He managed to slow himself a little for the second go, but didn't bother to remove it –he couldn't bear the emptiness a single second— before he hastily cleaned his hand on the sheets and fumbled for his phone. He had to tell him. How could he stay away if he didn't know?

It made much less sense to him when the knocks on his front door woke him up from another orgasm inspired daze. He was a complete mess, but it was light out, and people opened the door when it was light. Maybe it was Thomas. He could tell Thomas to tell coach he wouldn't be around for a bit... He pulled his bathrobe to cover his sweaty come stained body and barely remembered that he needed to remove the dildo before he limped to the front door. He should have asked who it was, it was what people did when someone knocked. But nobody who didn't live there was supposed to walk in without being buzzed in and...

Avali stood there, and all of Carry's expectations of an oblivious beta went up in flames when he saw the look on his face. He took a painful looking step away, dragging his eyes away from Carry.

"You're okay," he said after a moment.

"Yes," Carry said, still staring. Avali was wearing jeans and an old Flames sports jacket. He only had one sock on his trainer clad feet. And he wasn't supposed to be here.

"I thought..." Avali started, raising his head to look at Carry as if his resistance had broken. "I thought you would go..."

He had been planning to, after last time. Well, he'd been planning on finding an alpha that was safer than a stranger –there were agencies— and asking him to come over. But somehow he had never got around to it. He had thought he had time. His hands hurt, he realised, and looked for them to find he was gripping the doorway hard enough that his knuckles had gone white.

Avali stepped in and caught him by the elbows when he lost his balance. He was panting, but he held himself tense like a wire. Like he thought... Carry almost laughed. With despair, at the absurdness. He didn't even remember the seconds between being held up and lifting his hands to Avali's neck; their mouths meeting so perfectly the kiss was soft for a second. Then Avali growled and pushed his tongue into Carry's mouth and Carry gripped him back, sucking on it greedily, clinging like he'd drown. Except he _wanted_ to, he never wanted to taste anything but Avali's mouth ever again. Forget air, or water, or food. _This_ was what he needed.

Avali hoisted him up easily, getting Carry's leg around his waist and pressing Carry's cock into his chest as the bathrobe fell open. Carry bit him when he came, violently and a little painful. When he came to, Avali was stumbling under his dead weight and he had to quickly get his feet under himself again to keep them both upright.

"Sorry," Avali muttered, his pupils were dilated and his cheeks flushed and he was staring down at Carry like he didn’t quite know what to do with the fact that his hands were holding the bare skin of Carry’s hips. He was... Carry yanked him into another kiss, pushing into his mouth this time and the alpha got with the program and tightened his grip, pulling Carry flush against him. His clothes felt rough against Carry’s sensitized skin, and Carry didn’t care, he needed to be touched so badly he almost welcomed the pain. He didn't ask where the bedroom was before leading the way —he could smell it, Carry realised, flushing with shame or unbearable arousal, or both— and pushed Avali away hard enough to get him to let go so he could drop his robe. Avali gasped like he'd been shot and Carry —hard again already but feeling a little calmer with the promise of an alpha cock— shot him a hard look and ordered, "Naked now."   

Avali was so incapable of looking away that he tried to take his jacket off over his head. He almost got tangled but a ripping sound announced his clothes had lost that battle. And his naked chest wasn't meant to be resisted, Carry closed the two steps between them and got to work on his jeans himself —hands strangely steady, like his body had a mind of his own— till he managed and the smell of Avali's precome hit him like a ton of bricks to the groin. He had to clench his fists on the rough denim to keep from falling to his knees and burying his face in Avali's crotch. And then Avali's hands were taking hold of his, almost gently, and he was toeing off his shoes and pushing both boxers and trousers down to puddle at his feet.

The sheets were a mess, sweaty and come stained, but Carry couldn't feel them at his back when Avali's skin was pressing all along his front.  He could have laid on the floor, or possibly burning coals? And not minded. Avali's whole weight was pinning him to the mattress, his knee between Carry's, firm and hot against his sensitive cock, and his hands holding Carry's wrists down to the bed. It was like being in this exquisite but inexhaustible pain and then receiving relief all at once. Not absolute, arousal still burned in him, but now it was like a banked fire. Avali could kiss him long and exploratory, move sensuously against him and all Carry wanted to do was lay there and take it. He was hard again, and wet, of course, but he thought he could...

Avali let go of his left hand to get his hand under Carry's thigh and lift. His fingers found the spot and the tips dipped into the slickness there and suddenly, just like that, Carry was blazing again. He pushed against the invading digits and Avali didn't hold back, pushing two of them in at once. They went in so deep into Carry's waiting body that he thought for a moment he would come from that alone. But Avali froze, groaning in frustration and Carry blinked his eyes open to realise his lover had hold of his own erection in a painful grip even as his fingers remained buried in him. Suddenly it was all he could see. He wanted... He _needed_ to get fucked. He dug his fingers onto Avali's right arm and shook a little. Avali's eyes went to his and he chocked. "Do it. Get in me."

"But..." He clenched around Avali's fingers, feeling his own wetness slide down his buttocks and Avali trembled on top of him before gritting his teeth and pulling out his fingers. He watched his own hand for a few eternal seconds before switching hands and slicking himself with Carry's... Carry whimpered, sharply pulling his head away from both the view and the smell of it. And then his other leg was raised and hooked over Avali's shoulder and Avali pressed close, no fumbling, the head of his cock pressing almost exactly into the right place, and the first push of his hips making the head pop inside. It was still big and Carry felt it, but it was hard to care when it unwound every muscle in his body, when it felt like finally getting to drink after a long play. Earned and promised and... Avali was slowly burying himself in Carry, opening up space like he belonged there, like Carry's body had been missing this piece of itself –somehow lost and found in another person.

And then he was all the way in and Carry couldn’t hold back the noise anymore. He was whimpering softly with each thrust, because it _hurt_ , the relief so intense it was almost closer to pain. And he wanted more, he wanted everything, why had he waited for this? Why had he thought…? Avali picked up the pace, faster but not harder, and Carry clawed and this arms and shoulders, trying to get what he needed. He knew he should speak, but all he could manage were incoherent sounds of need. Avali growled a little in response, pushing his sweaty face against Carry’s exposed neck and breathing heavily as he worked his cock in and out of Carry’s body— the snap of his hips growing faster as Carry grew slicker. Carry clenched, trying to keep him inside, he never wanted him out, but it felt so good when he pushed inside once again, stretching him open as far as he could go. And he was just on the edge, if Avali would just… “Harder,” he rasped, as if his vocal chords had snatched a moment of freedom from the desperate gasping for air and used it wisely.

Avali obeyed like he was on strings, or like he had barely been holding back. Carry felt his hipbones against his buttocks as he shoved fast and hard, his cock slicing through Carry’s leaking hole like a poker through butter. He arched in response, opening himself up for it, taking it all and wanting it again, and Avali gave it to him: every inch of his hot, hard dick going into Carry fast and hard, and then again and again, like he would never stop, like he _couldn’t_ stop. The sound of a scream interrupted the rhythm of their bodies pushing against each other, straining for completion, for an impossible unity. And then he was coming, cock jerking against his own belly and covering the space between them with slick even as he clenched hard on Avali’s cock and got wetter still. Avali made a sound like he’d been hit right in the solar plexus, breathless and surprised, almost hurt, and then he aborted his pull and pushed back inside Carry instead, his hips flush against Carry’s arse, buried as deep as he could go and then his mouth found Carry’s. The kiss was almost too harsh to be called that and Carry –cock still twitching— was too dizzied by the exertions to do more than let Avali plunder his mouth. He felt the pressure increase as Avali’s cock expanded and he started to come, his seed trapped inside Carry’s body for a long moment before it started to overflow past the point where they were connected. And they were still connected because even as his kiss slowed down to leisurely licking Carry’s teeth, Avali wasn’t pulling out. Carry tensed in his arms, lassitude evaporating with the alarm, and he tried to push Avali away. It wasn’t… it wasn’t _possible_. He had the chip, and he had had it checked last month… It took him turning his head away from the kiss for Avali to react. He froze in place, still deeply seated inside Carry, and their eyes met. For a second it was so intimate, Carry couldn’t breathe. Then terror re-established itself. “Are you… Can you pull out?” he asked. His voice was a wreck, almost like he’d had Avali’s cock down his throat instead of… Avali hesitated for a moment before he shuffled back on his knees, lowering Carry’s legs as he went. His cock was still hard, but it slid out of Carry almost of its own once Avali stopped fighting the pressure of his own come and Carry’s wetness. Carry let himself close his eyes, breathing almost as heavily as he had been during the sex.

“Did you think…?” He opened his eyes. Avali looked terrified. “Why would you think I had knotted you?” he asked in a small voice.

_Fuck_ , Carry thought. “I’ve a chip, and I have my chip checked. Every month. It’s just… I just got…” he huffed, sitting up against the headboard and curling his legs against his front, not caring he was leaking all over the place. “Don’t make a big deal out of it. It’s heat, I’m not… I’m not thinking clearly.”

Avali watched him for a moment, but didn’t make a big deal out of it, after all, which, knowing how much he liked to complain, Carry took as a concession. “We should get some food and drink,” Avali said, and got up to call for take away.

 

&

 

The food didn’t arrive before Carry gave in and pushed Avali’s legs apart so he could kneel at his feet and nuzzle his face right into his crotch. Avali made a startled noise, even though he must have felt the pull of heat, too. It was different for alphas, they said. An omega’s need awakened their own, but it _wasn’t_ their own. Case in point: Avali wasn’t attracted to him, but when Carry needed an alpha, Avali rose to the occasion like Carry was pulling him in right by the balls. He hummed happily around the mouthful of Avali’s cock, and his teammate shivered violently, hands fisted on the sheets pooled at the bottom of the bed. Carry would bet he was fighting the urge to thrust, and —incensed by the unspoken challenge— he leaned forward and swallowed more of Avali, till he pushed against the back of his throat. He made himself breathe through his nose even as Avali’s hand shot up to cover his own mouth, muffling his shout at the feeling of being swallowed. Carry’s hole clenched —thighs already drenched again despite his quick detour through the shower— at the idea of getting that cock back into his arse. But this was good, too, even though there was no reproductive benefit to swallowing an alpha’s come; it felt right. Maybe it was just the sex, but the scent of it… and Avali smelled most intense here, or the _taste_ of him. Salty, yes, and kind of bitter, too. He sucked harder, and pulled back a little because he wanted more of it, he didn’t just want Avali’s come inside him, —almost permanent— but he wanted to savour it, to feel every second of it, every inch of his skin and every drop of his release. And then, just as Avali started shooting, he fumbled for his own cock and stripped himself in two quick strokes so that he almost choked on a mouthful of come when his orgasm hit.

 

&

 

The bell woke Carry from his doze against Avali’s thigh and he had a second to register Avali’s hand on his hair before it was gone and Avali was gently pushing him upright so he could get up and throw his pants on. Carry closed his eyes again, swallowing against the dryness of his mouth; the taste of Avali on his tongue was enough to make him shudder with protracted pleasure. He glanced down in disgust, his bedroom tile was fairly warm, but it was also splattered with both come and slick, as were his own legs. He knew the room must have smelled of drying come, but to his hormone-addled brain, the mess was a heady mixture of Avali’s usual scent and his own. And smelling them together… Carry let his head fall against the bedding, eyes closing. He couldn’t quite find the energy to scuttle back, much less make it to his feet. And then Avali was there and he kneeling by Carry to put a glass of water to his lips. A part of him wanted to balk at the intimacy, at the implication that he couldn’t even hold the glass, but when Avali tilted the glass, he let his head go and drank deep. He had needed the water, he realised as the glass was removed and the relief rushed through him. And Avali had known, because he was an alpha and Carry was an omega in the middle of heat.

Carry managed some food, mostly by virtue of shoving it into his mouth and chewing it as fast as he could manage. He’d wanted the water, but there was nothing in the spread of meats, fruits and breads that smelled even half as good as Avali. It seemed like a waste of time, even if the first time in the bed and to an extent, the blowjob, had taken the edge of his need. He hadn’t bothered with any clothes, and he could feel his wetness under his arse on the chair, too much of it for his body to contain.

Avali couldn’t have missed it, either, not even if having sex during heat didn’t form a temporary connection between compatible partners. Carry must have reeked of desire, even if he was too tired to get up and sit himself on Avali’s lap like he needed. He sometimes wondered if heat _could_ kill you, it felt like it should have, like it couldn’t demand so much of your body without doing some damage, without some risk. He knew omegas could become severely dehydrated, and that if they were underweight they were at risk of fainting, but most modern omegas had someone to check on them during their heats or were responsible enough to call an emergency heat line to get someone to give them regular calls and call an ambulance if they stopped responding.

Carry loved the heat line, it had meant at least a little bit of freedom from the people around him. It had meant not having to tell his _mother_ that he was, to all intents and purposes, so turned on it was making him sick.

“Johnson?” Avali was on his feet in front of him, Carry blinked, trying to bring him into focus and managed to raise a hand to hook on his jean’s belt loops. Avali nodded like this meant something to him, and it must have been guessing because it didn’t even mean anything to Carry. But he was grateful when Avali bent over and picked him up, and he did his best to hook his legs around Avali’s waist. He heard himself whimper but all he cared about was Avali’s warm skin against his swollen dick and the temporary relief to the endless ache of it.

“I’ve got you,” Avali murmured as he walked them back to the bedroom. And it was true, he laid Carry down on the bed and curled up behind him, lifting his leg to expose his entrance. He didn’t delay with stretching, just pushed two fingers through the slick heat to open Carry’s hole enough for the head of his cock and then kept pushing, holding his hips in a firm grip when Carry squirmed for more but keeping the pressure steady until he was all the way in. Carry felt his muscles go loose under Avali’s hands, the relief so intense it was almost better than coming. The pace was slow but punishing, short little jabs that was all the position allowed, and all Carry needed, in truth.

He didn’t remember coming, or falling asleep.

 

&

 

Avali had just woken up. His skin was full of bites and scratches and even his short hair was all over the place. Somehow, he was still wearing the single sock he'd arrived in. And despite the sock, Carry was severely tempted to trace the bruises with his fingers, or his tongue.

But heat had broken after that last heady fuck from behind, so anything that remained was just a consequence of the memory of good sex. Or the heady scent of come, and of sweat, his and Avali’s all mixed up clouding up the room and making Carry feel like he was drowning in it. Of course he wanted to have sex; he liked sex and there was a beautiful naked man marked up by his hands and teeth resting on the sheets they had destroyed together. Where else would his mind go?

But he knew better, he knew what he really wanted, most of the time, when his mind was clear and he was wearing clothes. And it wasn't sex. And he couldn't let it also be sex, because sex wasn't the kind of thing Carry could do on his spare time, or have without fucking everything else up. One was his nature, the other was people's, but both were equally unchangeable.

Avali stirred, maybe sensing his regard, maybe out of some alpha instinct to make sure the omega they'd fucked didn't run off. Or would they even care...? Carry crushed the thought. He didn't have time for paranoia. Avali had barely blinked, lips curving into a smile, when Carry asked, "Why did you come?"

Avali’s dark eyes looked blown still and the way he blinked heavily at Carry, looking confused, only added to the effect. “You called me,” he replied in a rough voice.

And Carry almost snapped at him for it. “What?”

Avali was frowning, shifting in place as if to get rid of the last of sleep. Carry’s skin felt raw, and other parts of him were definitely sore. “You texted me, don’t you remember?”

He sat up, pulling the sheets onto his lap, not that he had _anything_ left Avali hadn’t seen, tasted and... “I texted you so you’d _stay away_.”

Avali’s eyes widened and his scent went dark and stormy. _Dangerous_ , Carry’s brain said. Carry couldn’t quite find words for it, but he could see Avali’s fear clear enough on his face. “No, you didn’t. You texted me one word, the... you said ‘heat’. Why would you text me that if you wanted me to stay away?”

_Heat._ He remembered wanting… Well, he had wanted this, of course. But he remembered thinking he had to warn Avali off because of course he wouldn’t be able to resist if he was tempted… But they had _agreed_. He had clearly told Avali to stay away during his heats and not to touch him outside of hockey. “I said... we agreed you would stay away next time.”

“Yes!” Avali exclaimed. “I know, and I was surprised but you... _you texted me_.” He repeated, then exhaled and added, low. “You needed me.”

“I didn’t need _you_ ,” Carry almost sneered. “If you think for even a moment that...”

“You said you didn’t hate me,” Avali interrupted.

“What?” repeated, feeling so ungrounded by Avali’s calm as he had by his fear.

“You said you didn’t hate me, so why not me?” He was looking Carry’s way but his gaze was fixed on his chin, not his eyes. Still, he spoke, “I mean, you need an alpha to... help. So why not me? I’m safe. I would never... You know you can trust me.” He finally raised his eyes at this and didn’t look away.

And the stupid thing was, Carry did know. “How do I know that?” he asked, as much to himself as to Avali.

Avali’s shoulders straightened, the sheets barely covering him enough for decency and this was as serious as it got, _dammit_ , and Carry was still fighting the urge to let his eyes slide lower. Avali didn’t seem to notice, too intent on his promises. “Because I would _never_ jeopardize our team,” he said, and there was that scent again, warmer than it had been during heat, if less hot. Carry thought he’d caught a whiff of it when they were with Thomas. “And you are my team. And without you... without you we are never making it to the finals.”

It was the least romantic reason anybody could ever offer, and everything Carry had ever wanted to hear from a teammate. And it hurt a little, too, because as much as he didn’t want it, a part of him that was afraid and alone had wanted to hear something else, too. But it was the right answer. He knew that.

“Okay,” he said quietly, “we can try.”

He made himself get up, leaving the sheets behind, and walk calmly to the ensuite bathroom. "I need a shower, but you can go next," he told Avali.

He didn't expect an answer, and he didn't get one.


	14. Freedom As A Trick of the Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody knows what's going on in Keenan's head, not even him, and Carry makes a momentous decision that he's been putting off.

& 

 **Keenan**  

He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. He had shown up at Johnson's place as if summoned by the king himself. Not a thought, not a moment of hesitation. And then... well, he hadn't expected anything else but what had happened; although he wished the memory of it wouldn't be so much more vivid this time, or so arousing that he had jacked off thrice since making it home after his shower.  

The sex he was fine with, even unusually good sex. He didn't expect his body to be immune to hormones any more than he expected it to be immune to gravity, or friction. It was what he had asked that wouldn't leave him alone: he couldn't watch TV, nor read, and he'd worked up as much as his sleep-deprived body could handle without injury –barely. Why had he asked? He wanted Johnson during heat, undeniably, and he remembered enough that now that he wasn't sure he would turn him down even outside it. That was bad enough, that after a lifetime of insisting he _couldn't_ feel like this for a man, he had crashed into sharing his first heat sex with one and now had gone and done it again. He was thinking about him… about his body while he… He felt like a liar. But he _hadn't_ lied. And he hadn't changed his mind. He'd looked at men since that first time, as discreet as he could manage so he wouldn't attract unwanted attention. He had even searched out the slight, wiry ones. Hell, he had checked out their _rivals_. There weren’t many players as small as Johnson, but there were a few. But playing hockey didn't help them make anything go ping as far as Keenan's libido was concerned. And still, without even trying, the turn of a feminine neck or a well-defined behind in a pair of jeans could make him pause. 

Johnson was the exception. Because looking at Johnson meant remembering the best sex he'd ever had, and that he'd never have it again. He’d ignored the conflicting urges to remember as much as he could and bury what he did recall as deep in his unconscious as he could manage without resorting to hypnosis, but he’d still gone for it a second time. Actions were considerably louder than words, especially words he’d never dared to speak. When Johnson had suddenly texted him and decided to give him another chance —maybe because heat madness had made him, but he'd still _asked_ — Keenan hadn't been able to let the chance pass him by. He didn’t quite regret it, he knew he’d have gone mad wondering about it otherwise; he wouldn’t have been able to keep from wondering what it might have been like a second time, if Johnson would feel as good under him as he had the first time, if...  

Even now, far from Johnson and his heat and even his regularly enticing smell, the idea of that some other alpha would have that instead, of Johnson arching up under someone else’s hands... it was just unbearable. And what he’d said was true, someone else could go to the press, or just accidentally out Johnson to someone who would. But he hadn’t thought about any of that; he’d just gone because Johnson had texted him a single word. A single word that he hadn’t even meant, apparently.  

But it was okay, really, he hadn’t lied, he was safe, and Johnson was an omega, and a teammate, it was only natural Keenan would want to keep him safe. Johnson obviously wasn't up to the task if he thought it was a good plan to go out to a _bar_ to pick up. Keenan couldn't imagine what he'd been thinking, especially after his speech about prejudice against omegas. But it was okay because he’d seen Keenan was right, and he’d said yes. 

They were all good reasons, but they weren't all the truth. He knew now that Johnson had been right: they were a one true pair —perfectly compatible and, some claimed, destined for each other— and not even the fact that Johnson was a man was enough to hold Keenan back. All the little moments were piling up on him, making him feel heavier and heavier till he was literally buried under the knowledge. The proof. He'd held the door open for Johnson, and made sure he had enough water when he had drank a little too much, and left a clean towel for him on his bench in passing in the dressing room —even though he still got changed as far away from Johnson as physically possible—, and he'd made him breakfast while he waited for his turn to shower. 

The look on Johnson's face when he'd come out to find the spread of eggs and bacon and pancakes had shocked Keenan into awareness. He'd mumbled that he needed a shower before escaping. Johnson had eaten when he'd gotten back and Keenan had made up an excuse about being late not to eat his share, not wanting to stay still for Johnson's curious looks. Or worse, his questions. 

They had two whole days off before a one week of away games and he was pathetically grateful for the reprieve. He should have been resting or chilling with the team or his family, what with two games almost back to back on the other end of the continent, not really worth flying back and forth. But he was too worried Johnson —who had come out of his self-imposed isolation as of late— would be there, and as much as he could have used the distraction, he wasn’t stupid enough to show up to dinner with his parents and siblings and assume he wasn’t going to get busted for keeping a secret like this. 

He wanted... he wanted to play, he realised. Because playing was the one thing in the world that had never failed to keep him in the moment and away from dark thoughts. It had saved his life once and he knew if it came down to it, it would again. So he showed up at the rink, always open for players —unless coach blacklisted you into the Injured Reserve list— and blessedly empty. They were all obsessives, it was the only way you got this high up —even if it wasn't enough on its own— but his teammates were being sensible and enjoying the time off the ice like any normal person who knew they would be playing hard and fast very soon would. Keenan ignored his own common sense and stepped onto the ice, he hadn't worn pads, imagining he could be lazy that way, but now it made him feel naked and unprotected instead of free. 

 

& 

 **Cartwright**  

 

He didn't _get_ Avali. He was willing to concede he'd given out mixed signals with that message, but how had that ended up with him getting a homemade breakfast in his own _home_ from a guy who had just proposed to be his casual hook-up in the name of safety? Maybe it wouldn't have hit him so hard if it hadn't been for Pucio.  

Pucio hadn't cooked him breakfast, the one time he'd spend the night. No, Carry had woken him up with a blowjob before Pucio fucked him hard and fast on his wrecked sheets and then again in the shower. He hadn't even had the excuse of heat anymore. Before that, Pucio had fucked him a weekend straight before Carry's body had had enough to admit it couldn't do anything against the anticonceptive chip in his thigh. After all that sex, they'd both needed some food but Carry had had the foresight to order extra take-out and they'd shoved it into the sonic oven and sat at the kitchen isle. They had chatted about the new formation Coach had introduced, Pucio insisting it had all been his idea and Carry believing him —too knackered to really question much— and asking for more details just to keep Ali talking. He’d been interested because it was hockey, and he’d liked Pucio. He’d liked looking at him—shirtless in his kitchen and with inimitable bed hair— and feeling the effects of three days of sating a hunger he’d been ignoring for what felt like his whole life. 

He thought football might have come up. Carry had liked playing as a kid and he followed the local teams half-heartedly still and paid attention to Cup finals—if only because they were played during breaks and it was something to do with his father when he was at home. It was the kind of thing he talked about at bars with the guys, just to be part of the team. Back when Pucio and him had been friends —or Pucio had been _friendly_ — it had been mostly TV shows. Carry didn’t like movies, too short to really love, but TV shows he could rely on to reel him back in when he needed a break from hours of training, hours of noise and people and their demands. It was something he did alone, but it had been nice to share it with someone who got it. Pucio liked to buddy watch stuff with his brother, who also played professionally at the other end of the continent and he seemed to have a skill for getting to the bottom of both the good and the bad. 

Carry could admit, then, that he hadn’t made an effort to keep the distance. That he’d watched Pucio’s lips as he spoke of the way a single person could change the world, that when Villiers had elbowed Pucio too hard and Pucio’s arm had brushed his, Carry hadn’t mentioned the breach of protocol, even though Pucio hadn’t apologized. They were all a little tipsy, he figured, and anyway, he didn’t like reminding people he was an omega. It was absurd to suppose an alpha brushing his arm was going to send him into heat, even if he liked Pucio’s Sunday roast scent a little too much for comfort. 

Carry had known what he was doing, that he was flirting, that Pucio was flirting right back, that nobody around them cared enough to stop them. It was daring, and —if idiots were to be believed— it was wrong because they didn’t plan on anything permanent. And it was, especially, not safe. For Carry. But it was Carry’s _choice_ , and even if it was a stupid one, choosing was energizing, daring was exhilarating. He’d lived so long being careful, protected and alone. It wasn’t fair to say he hadn’t been able to resist, or that the freedom had gone to his head; he simply had not _wanted_ to resist. He’d given in, fully, consciously, decadently, knowingly walked past the line –not like it wasn’t there, but like it didn’t _matter_. He hadn’t invited Pucio over during his heat. No, he’d asked him over like a beta might, for video games, to ‘hang out’, and then he’d sat close enough Pucio could almost be excused for touching him and… well. Pucio hadn’t needed to be _asked_.  

But he hadn’t gone to a bar and picked up a random alpha, he’d done it all with someone he knew. Someone he thought of as a friend. He’d never supposed Pucio wanted anything permanent, it was expected of alphas in hockey that they’d put off bonding till they were established and if sleeping with a teammate was frowned upon, a relationship would have been a scandal. But he _had_ expected some loyalty, exactly what Avali had so readily offered. And Pucio had behaved like he was any hook-up at a bar; he’d gone and bragged to his best mate about it, had probably not even bothered to tell him to keep it quiet. Not that anybody who’d spent five minutes with Harry Villiers had any right to expect him to be discreet about anything. 

But when his agent had called to tell him they'd been found out his first thought had been that it meant giving up Pucio. Of course, a second later he had realised his agent didn't mean he was suspended or had to go see management, but that he was actually _off the team_ and he'd forgot all about the alpha till two days later, when —with nothing to lose— he'd slammed into the coaches' office and demanded to know why Pucio was in the rink.  

Not that he needed to ask. He was used to the bitterness of injustice by then. Used to the fact that he never got picked as much as his skills deserved, that he was never asked to captain even in teams in which he had played for longer than anybody else and displayed the strategic thinking that came naturally to him, used to the _looks_ —the lust, and the pity, the surprise followed by an averted gaze. 

He had known he'd be in trouble if they were found out. He just hadn't realised the magnitude of the punishment would be so disproportionate with the... indiscretion, they'd called it. Because it wasn't illegal or against contract or any risk to his body —which he was obliged to keep fit to play during the season— but a team didn't have to have a reason to trade a player, simply decide to do so. So they hadn't kicked him out completely, just passed him on to be someone else's problem. 

And he could be grateful for that much. Not to them, of course, but to his wyrd. 

But this time he wasn't going in expecting to get lucky. He would find a way. Sex with an alpha was supposed to help regulate an omega's heats even with a chip on. Clearly just not touching bare skin wasn't enough if they were psychically linked and used it. He didn't need a diagram to see that the way he'd been openly projecting to Avali —particularly sensitive to Carry's feelings and intentions— had both ensured their spectacular playing and inflamed the connection between them that was meant to be the beginning of a bond. 

They should play without it, but how could they? He'd instinctively used the connection from the first and the moment he'd cut it, their on-ice chemistry had gone to hell. Maybe it was because they didn't get along outside the realm of instinct, maybe simply that it was hard to play with any handicap and now it couldn't feel like anything but. 

He wandered into the bedroom, intent on tidying up and stopped short when the heady smell of sex reached him. Only it wasn't just sex, he could smell Avali's warm sand, only a hint of the ocean scent. He took another step towards the bed, determined to strip everything on it, and was surprised when it send a pleasant ache to his hard cock. 

Avali wasn't even around —not even a hint of his mental presence— and Carry was still hopelessly affected. He could close his mind and scent, to an extent at least, but he couldn't stop _smelling_. He shivered, wishing he could bury his face in the desecrated bedding, knowing it would unknot the tension pulling on his neck. 

It was ridiculous, he didn't even _like_ Avali; why was his body so obsessed with him? But it was a stupid train of thought, the body couldn't be explained away or reasoned with. It could only be dealt with in its own terms: injuries needed time to heal, and sexual attraction had to either be resolved or removed. He knew this reasoning was dangerously close to the one that had led him to Pucio's bed, but the underlying truth of it all hadn't changed: he needed sex during heat to the point where resisting made him ill. He _hated_ needing it, needing anything he couldn't choose. He also hated that eventually —despite extensive training— he could become too tired to play, or too out of breath, or too thirsty. But at least those physical limitations could be overcome by himself, heat sex was worse because it wasn't a demand of his body he could simply allocate time to solve, he actually needed _someone else_ to solve it for him. 

But need it he did. He knew what happened when he didn't listen to his muscles, and maybe it was time to admit that his libido was equally insistent and equally unlikely to care about what Carry wanted. Time to admit that he hadn't wanted to resist temptation out of heat, but that he’d taken the final step and slept with Pucio for the first time because he knew very soon his body would leave him with no other choice. It was so little, to choose when and who, but it had felt as necessary to his sanity as sex with an alpha felt to his body. 

He was glad he'd got to have sex without heat clouding his mind, even if it had made his heat come a little sooner, even if Pucio had fucked up so spectacularly afterwards. 

Even if now he couldn’t put it off at all. He needed sex during heat —but not outside it— and he wasn't going to deny his body what it needed. But it didn't need to be with Avali. He was right that a stranger wouldn't be safe, but there _were_ professionals who prided themselves on their discretion. Carry had spent enough late nights reading their policies to know they were liable if anything got out and that the agencies had a throughout background check done of all their employees. It was a perfect guarantee, but nothing was, and at least this way he would be calling the shots. 

He called, not because he feared being recognized in a place that catered mostly to the perpetually rich and the hypocritically noble, but because he had ran far away from it all for a reason and he didn’t want to walk into whatever fancy offices they kept. 

Two days later, he received the samples in the mail. Little pieces of pure cotton with a hint of sweat, the most obvious pheromone carrier the human body produced. The first one he opened was a disappointment, almost all sweat with a little hint of acrid lemon. He wondered if anybody actually found this particular alpha's scent pleasant. But they must have, everybody had compatible partners, to one degree or another.  

He found he'd stopped with the second sample box in his hands, unopened, lost in the thought of Avali's scent —as clear in his mind as Avali's face— and shook himself. Sex he was resigned to give himself into, but not a single alpha that could ruin his career on top of... No, he wasn't doing this again. He'd find a professional. No, better, more than one, and then he'd deal with his need and he'd tell Avali he'd sorted it out. He was allowed to change his mind, after all, and his teammate would see it was for the best. 

Nobody smelt like the ocean, but it was a relief. He could deal with a pleasant and vaguely grassy scent, or lemon pie —which he liked when he was in he mood for something sweet. And he was glad none of them smelt like his childhood and happiness and freedom —before he'd presented and been thrust headfirst into the nightmare of adulthood— because he knew that whatever Avali smelt like to his hindbrain, that freedom was gone forever.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit 60k and kinda resolved a plot point :) Now I'm thinking of dividing the story in proper chapters besides the POV sections but seems like it'd be a LOT of work. Maybe I'll just make each POV section into a chapter and be done with it (not to worry, if I do, I'll post two at once each time).


	15. Questions Answered & Asked

&

Keenan

He'd overdone it at the rink and he was still feeling it by the time they boarded the plane. Thomas took one look at him and passed him a sleep mask, Keenan took it with a silent nod of thanks. Even though he never slept well on planes, Thomas actually had to shake him awake when they landed. He looked concerned.

"What's wrong with you?"

"I went skating," he admitted after yawning wide enough to make his jaw crack audibly.

"You what?" Thomas blurted out. "We had two days off!"

"I know.... I just. I needed to get out of my head. I know it was a rookie move but..."

"What was a rookie move?" Interrupted Santiago as he passed them on his way out, he could never sit still long enough to wait for the doors to actually open.

"He went skating," Thomas reported, shaking his head in disbelief.

Santiago frowned thoughtfully, "Yeah, okay," he conceded, "I almost did too. Amanda wouldn't let me."

"Maybe that's what Avali needs, a better half to keep him in line," Thomas teased and Keenan's stomach fell. He wanted that. And it wasn't a wistful faraway fantasy of something he'd have some day. His hormones must have been sending some mixed up signals to his brain because he wanted it so badly it hurt and he wanted it with... But that was just hormones, he knew that. He knew he was straight. He knew that about himself with unshakable certainty because he had spent so long questioning it, trying to make it a ‘tendency’ rather than an absolute. And he wanted Johnson, but nobody could make you stop being yourself, could they?

He wanted a mate, someone serious like he'd had with Jessica —who'd call him on his bullshit and wait up for him and curl up in his arms, small and protected—, but just because Johnson had awakened that in him it didn't mean it was Johnson who would silence that need.

It would never work, it couldn’t, not even if Johnson had been at all interested.

 

&

He wasn’t going to keep doing this to himself, making it worse by getting something that was almost what he wanted, something that would always leave him wanting more. But he wasn’t going to drop Johnson, either. If there was one thing Keenan was proud of was of being a good teammate and he wasn’t going to let some chemistry get in the way of that. He had meant what he’d told Johnson: they needed him, but he needed them to. No single player could carry a team to victory, and no player could really deal with the stress and high stakes alone, either.

He made sure to get everyone's room numbers at dinner and to stop by reception and check that his and Johnson's both were scent-proofed. He would go if Johnson called him, of course; he'd never leave him at risk and it wasn’t like it could make things worse; it wasn’t likely he’d stop wanting it if he just stopped doing it. And he wanted it, he could admit that. It was physical and it was natural and they both knew the score. But it was up to Johnson to ask. Keenan wasn’t going to give in for his own sake, but he couldn’t not give in for himself, either. If Johnson needed him, he was ready.

If he had a quick shower, it was only because he was still tired from his stupid stunt skating before a long trip. And then he was laying on top of the covers in just his boxers, the room too warm despite the AC and he should have been falling asleep right away, get some snooze before the game the next afternoon, but he couldn't. It was even later back home and even if he'd slept on the plane, he still hadn't recovered.

And then he understood: he was waiting. He groaned, rolling over and burying his face in the covers, sniffing at the fake floral scent of detergent and feeling the wrongness of it like an ache. He wanted... he could have gone out. But he couldn't, not really, he couldn't afford to pull another rookie move. He was the alternate captain and he was not an idiot: he needed his head on the game, and so did Johnson.

He must have fallen asleep at some point because his alarm woke him up the next morning, opening the drapes automatically to let the sunlight pour into his face. He tried to hide under the covers, only to blink awake in confusion when he found himself without.

He got himself down to breakfast but it took Bauer elbowing him to get him to pay attention the conversation around him.

"Do you know who we are playing?"

Keenan blanked on the answer for an embarrassingly long moment. "Um... Titans," he said and it sounded more like a question than an answer, even though he was sure. And then he looked around for Johnson. Only of course Johnson wasn't there.

"Now he gets it," Thomas commented wryly.

Keenan turned to him. "Is he not playing?" Thomas gave him a weird look. "Of course he's playing, but they are gonna target him." That happened sometimes with ex-teammates, but Johnson had only spent a season with the Titans, surely they couldn't resent him that much?

Except he'd never come across a player whose trading was such an absolute mystery that there weren't even rumours. It felt worse, somehow, as if whatever it had been, was too shameful to speak of.

"Where is Johnson?"

"In his room," Sven said, walking in and taking the chair next to his. "He needs quiet." He cast a look over the assembled team, then settled on Molierre —the oldest defenseman— and Molierre nodded. "We will keep an eye out for him."

"He's too fast to get hurt much, anyway," Santiago added, and then took such a huge bite out of his sandwich half the table burst out laughing. Santiago grinned, squirrel-faced.

Keenan looked away, wondering if he could get away with checking on Johnson himself. But what was he supposed to check? Sven had just confirmed he was fine, or as fine as anybody could be —Keenan could hardly imagined having his former teammates turned into not simply his rivals, but his enemies— and what could Keenan offer him? Johnson didn't even like him. He couldn't be supportive of someone who would never lean on him, and if all his instincts screamed otherwise... well, he'd have to focus on keeping the Titans as far from Johnson as possible. That much he could do.

The Titans weren't overtly aggressive, they lined up for the puck drop with acceptable professionalism. It was worse because it was subtle, and because they knew Johnson well enough to be subtle —a reminder of their shared past to add salt to the injury—and Johnson... he was evading as best he could, but he wasn't playing his best. There was something stilted about his game. His usual steely determination had cooled into sub-zero temperatures, more a sensation that a scent. Keenan didn’t need anybody feeding him plays, of course, but without the edge it gave them, they were just two players who’d spent less than a season together against a seasoned line who had been together for years and who knew Johnson’s moves better than his own team.

On the bench, —after coach had wisely replaced their line— Keenan risked his fury by demanding to know why he was closing himself off. "You know we can't play like this."

Johnson didn’t get mad, though, just turned his cold gaze on Keenan. "This is the only way I can play this game."

Keenan's hand twitched, but he kept it back, even though in full gear he could have touched Johnson without any skin to skin contact. "This way we are going to lose."

Johnson's mouth twisted. "You think I don't know that?"

"So let me read you."

"I don't..." Johnson's gaze drifted towards the game. "I don't have enough control for that. Not... Not when I'm not at my best."

His fists were clenched and for a moment, the sourness of his scent was overwhelming. He was letting Keenan get a taste in hopes it would shut him up. But this was hockey, and sorry as he felt for Johnson, nothing but the best was acceptable. "So what if they can tell?"

Johnson's head wiped his way.

But Keenan insisted, "What if they can tell you are upset? Who wouldn't be? What's the point of pouring all your efforts in pretending you are unaffected when they know it isn't true?"

"I..."

"Play with me, show them what we can do together. That's a much better revenge."

He saw Johnson swallow, shoulders tensing and the scent turned colder. Ice. Keenan smiled; he knew what it meant. "I'm not sure I can," Johnson said, but he was vacillating.

"Try," he demanded, and Johnson raised his head and met his eyes, for once not looking defensive that an alpha was telling him what to do.

"Okay," he agreed, not easily, but honestly. Keenan could see his posture straighten and his expression harden. He looked hard and unyielding and he had never been more beautiful.

&

Thomas' pass to Johnson connected one second before the Titan's defenseman slammed into him. Johnson twisted enough not to go flying but, despite his best efforts, he couldn't keep his feet. He fell to his knees, breathing hard enough that Keenan could see from across the rink. Keenan was halfway to him before the referee called a stop to the game to go check on Johnson himself. Johnson dutifully tested out his limbs, almost managing to cover his wincing, and then promptly refused when Keenan suggested he take a break. He met Keenan's eyes with a fury that left whatever anger he'd felt towards Keenan himself in the playground of emotional turmoil. "I'm fine, I can play." He wasn’t just open, but almost radiating his anger, as if he hadn’t simply stopped holding back his anger but also foregone the basic civility of muffling them so as not to overwhelm others. He was angry and he didn’t care who knew. But was he out of control? He had been playing just fine before he’d been knocked down…

Keenan hesitated, glancing towards Sven on the bench for a second. Their captain wouldn't come over when Keenan had the situation in hand —and it was the first break Sven got from playing all night—,but he wasn't sure he did. Johnson wasn't obviously injured, no, but he was so angry he was bound to make a mistake. But if he insisted Johnson take a break... if Johnson got angry at him, it could mean destroying their whole game. If Johnson closed himself off again, there was no way they could resist the Titans at all. In fact, because the Titans specialized in fast plays, sending Johnson to warm the bench and getting Bauer in would leave them at a disadvantage as well. "Okay," he said, "but you have to tell me if something gets worse."

Johnson nodded but they both knew it was an empty promise; in the heat of the game nobody noticed their injuries, not unless there was a bone sticking out somewhere. The game was only over when you couldn’t skate anymore.

Johnson got the puck again, zoomed past the offense and ran right into Ali Pucio. He tried to swerve, but Pucio didn't waste the chance; he crowded Johnson till he fumbled a pass to Keenan that got promptly intercepted by Larroux. It was all downhill from there. Johnson had been trying, just like he'd promised, till his run-in with Pucio, but afterwards he looked like he could barely stay on his skates and even after Coach noticed and pulled him out, they were all too out of sorts to manage to come together.

And then, lining up to shake hands with the smirking Titans, Johnson's scent resurfaced from wherever he'd buried it the moment he’d been called off ice. For a moment, Keenan actually looked around looking for a real fire before he caught on and glanced at his linemate. He’d never smelt something like it from a human being, it was nothing like the burnt caramel of Johnson’s dislike for him, this was burning hair, as if… he didn’t know, did Johnson wish to do that to someone? Or was it just a reflection of his emotions?

Thomas was in between them and he couldn't see Johnson's face, but he didn't need to, the delight in Villier's was more than enough. He pushed Thomas aside and stepped between them, ready to knock a few of Villier's shiny whites out of his mouth. He didn't make it far, though: Johnson yanked on his jersey with enough force to make him stumble and turn away from Villiers. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright and he was most certainly not okay, no matter how deeply he had once again buried his scent. He waited a beat for words, but then realised that a head shake was all his teammate could manage without unclenching his jaw. He breathed out, keeping his eyes on Johnson and ignoring the Titans and his own teammates. It was probably only a few seconds, but Johnson seemed to know when it was safe to let go. Keenan wasn't as certain. Johnson didn't look like he cared that Villiers outweighed him by at least thirty kilos, or to remember that starting a fight could get him banned from playing the next game. Thomas broke them out of it with a sharp elbow on Johnson's side that got him to look away from Keenan.

"Stop making a fuss, it's just what they want!" He hissed at them, bland smile firmly in place and yanked on Keenan to get him back in line. Keenan looked up and met Ali Pucio's eyes. Only for a second, though, because Pucio's eyes flickered to Keenan's right, to Johnson, and back again. Did he suspect...? Keenan wondered, and then realised how stupidly short-sighted he'd been. Pucio didn't suspect anything, he simply couldn't look away from Johnson, not even when he moved on to Thomas, now on Keenan’s left, could he keep himself from stealing a last glance. They must have just shook hands and Keenan had missed it. Keenan risked his own look: Johnson was shaking Laroux hand and accepting his bland greetings with a polite smile and a gaze so fixed he couldn't have been really looking. And he wasn't, Keenan understood, he was looking away. From Pucio. And it had been Pucio who had thrown Johnson off his game so badly, too. Pucio, who was an alpha.

He couldn’t ask Johnson, not if his former teammates made him smell like he was immolating himself, and he could obviously not ask the Titans. Not even Laroux, who both on and off ice had kept things strictly professional. It just wasn’t done. But he couldn’t help but wonder: had Pucio been…?

“Avali, you alright?” Santiago asked, nudging him on his way to the showers. Keenan blinked, realising he was clenching his fists. He exhaled, nodding in autopilot, and Santiago shrugged –completely naked, Keenan noted absently, eyes barely registering the sight that could have probably made a couple hundred fans faint—and walked away. Keenan didn’t see him, he’d already turned around to look for Johnson –forgetting he wasn’t supposed to look at him in the changing room, much less look for him. It didn’t matter. Johnson wasn’t there. For a second, Keenan thought of looking for him, but just then Sven walked in looking sour and he raised his eyebrows at him instead. "You okay, man?"

Sven buffed. "I'll live, just a bruise." He pointed at his jaw, where somehow goalie padding and helmet had both failed to protect him. Keenan whistled, impressed despite himself.

"I've never seen anybody get a direct hit on you before."

"Well, they were really trying. You should see Johnson," he added, sitting next to Keenan to unlace. "He's multicoloured."

"Is he alright?" He asked and he must have given something away because Sven turned to look at him.

"It's just bruises," he said, eyes on Keenan's face. "He's probably more pissed than anything else."

"Ah, yeah," Keenan used his unrolling his socks as an excuse to look away. "Those guys are arseholes."

And Sven kindly didn't comment on how angry Keenan didn't sound.

&

Drinking after a game this bad was sometimes a bad idea, but when Johnson himself suggested it, nobody had the heart to deny him. Johnson was normally a solitary guy and if he wanted the team this time, if he needed them... They would be there. Keenan allowed himself to finish his first beer in a couple of gulps with the promise that he'd sip the second, but that also meant that an hour later he was one of the few guys sober enough to carry a tray back and forth. He found Johnson sitting at the bar. He must have slipped away when he wasn't looking because he was already slumping on a stool, nursing a drink that was most definitely not beer –Keenan had known he was in the room still, and little more because Johnson had closed up so far after the game, he didn't think anybody else in the room knew he wasn't a beta.

"Thanks for not breaking Villier's face," Johnson told him directly, blinking his long eyelashes in Keenan's direction like he had no idea how flushed he looked or how...

"I guess I should leave that honour to you," Keenan said, settling on the next stool and keeping his eyes on the bartender preparing what looked like a tricky drink.

He felt more than saw Johnson shrug. "I want to beat him at hockey first," he said. "Or it looks like I'm a bad loser."

Keenan laughed, and Johnson reached out and patted his arm –over the shirt but clumsy enough Keenan could feel it. "I'm sorry we lost," he told the bar top.

"Me too," Keenan agreed, taking a swallow of his beer. He hated losing, but this had really taken the cake…

"It's because I was a mess," Johnson added.

And Keenan turned to him in surprise. "Self-centred much?” he asked, more annoyed than he really should have been. But Johnson was so confident most of the time that the idea that the Titans had made him think… “There were a couple more people besides you on the ice, Johnson."

"Yes, but..."

"No,” Keenan interrupted. No way were they winning this. “I missed that shot, should I beat myself up about it forever?"

"So it's just the gods?" Johnson asked, sounding more amused than defeated. He’d take it.

He risked a glance. Johnson was looking at him. "Pretty much, that's how it goes."

"I wish I could believe that," Johnson murmured, leaning his head on the sticky bar like he couldn't muster the will to hold it up any longer. Keenan’s hand twitched before he firmly pressed it against the wood. They were out of uniform, and touching was completely out of line.

"You believe in you,” he offered after a beat. “That should do it."

And maybe if he had had a little more to drink he’d have added: I believe in you.

He got them both sodas instead, and Johnson a glass of water besides. It wasn't much, but at least it'd keep the hangover at bay the next morning, and it made Keenan feel a little better about the bruises he knew were under Johnson's long sleeved shirt, about the way he'd looked at whatever Villiers had said to him. Not a lot better, mind —a part of him insisted he'd failed, he'd let his... teammate get hurt— but a little. It was better than nothing. He'd take it.

&

Cartwright

The game against the Lions wasn't meant to be a challenge. They had good players, Carry wouldn't argue otherwise, but a lot of them were rookies or almost and that didn't lead to a lot of cohesion. Good players didn't make a good team.

But somebody had done something with the Lions since the last time Carry had played them. He realised as soon as he saw them move into formation. They weren't looking at each other. They didn't need to.

&

The reporters were having a field day with the Lions' comeback, and nobody enjoyed rubbing a loss on a team's face more than a reporter —even the other team's fans normally restricted themselves to booing and shouted insults. Not reporters, though, reporters weren't happy with insulting you, they had to make you relive every tiny mistake that had cost you a game till you ended up convinced that the whole thing was your sole responsibility. Not that there was any chance Carry wouldn't have hated reporters anyway, really. There were a few omega reporters but for the most part it was betas and alphas and Carry would have had a hard time choosing between ignorance and condescension.

"Did you see Billy's pass?" she asked him, smiling a little in remembrance and Carry decided he was grateful she was a beta and therefore noseblind. He was pretty sure he was keeping his scent muted but the sheer fury her question had inspired almost left him ashamed anyway. He wasn’t a violent person, aside from hockey, he hardly even liked sports that required physical contact, but sometimes he felt anger bubble up in him so fast he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to keep it back.

"Yes," Carry said shortly. What was the point of the question anyway? She knew he had seen, it had gone right pass him —too far to intercept even if Billy Hobb wasn't an almost seven foot giant who would have knocked Carry off his skates— and it had ended up in their net, despite Alarski's best efforts. The poor kid had been sent away by Coach the moment the score was final, looking like he hardly knew where he was and wished he was anywhere else. If Carry knew anything about goalies, the whole team would take him out and get him drunk later.

"How do you feel about not being able to protect your team?" she continued. She said it evenly, like it was a perfectly reasonable question.

Carry swallowed and gave himself five seconds to calm down before he gritted out, "I feel bad we lost, obviously, but..."

"Johnson plays offense," someone interrupted. Except not someone, Carry knew who it was immediately and without doubt. Avali was looming over them both, in socks but still half in padding. The reporter glanced up at him, straightening in what might have been alarm. "It's not his job to protect the team." He gave her a practiced smile, so transparently fake to Carry he thought Avali must have meant her to know. "We are a team, and we failed today. But you win some, you lose some, right?" He shrugged, the movement travelling down his exposed arms impossible not to follow. "Otherwise the game isn't a challenge anymore."

The reporter stood up, still a head and a half shorter than Avali but able to meet his eyes without craning her neck back ridiculously. "Did you expect the Lions to be a challenge?" she asked, turning away from Carry. Carry got up as well, the last thing he wanted was to have them both towering over him.

Avali paused, then nodded, smiling a little ruefully. "We underestimated them," he admitted, and hell, Carry had never seen him talk to a reporter before but he could be charming. "Well, I know I did. But we will learn from it and do better next time. Their style has changed a lot since the last time we played them, but we have some tricks up our sleeve, too," he added, and Carry almost flinched when he caught the glance Avali threw his way. Did he think reporters were blind to body language?

"So you are happy with your new line?" she asked, glancing briefly at Carry to gauge his reaction. "Even though you two are playing together?"

Avali froze for a second too long, but Carry had expected this line of questioning, even if nobody had dared to bring it up to him yet. "Why wouldn't we want to play together?" he asked with perfect confusion, shoulders down, expression bland; the perfect mask.

"Well..." she hedged, glancing about as if she didn’t want to be overheard. "You are both unbonded, doesn't that...?"

He was tempted to make her ask, but that would have meant prolonging this conversation —on his own, he'd have put up with the discomfort, with Avali there he couldn't bear to.

He frowned at her, not in anger –the extent of his indignation would have earned him nothing but problems—but premeditated. She’d crossed a line and clearly knew it, he wanted it made clear he knew it as well. “Yeah, and so are a lot of people. Somehow we all manage to work with plenty of colleagues that are unattached."

"But..." she started, but she wasn’t really up to pressing. She was a sports reporter and she was unlikely to have experience interrogating people about their romantic lives. Carry wondered if she’d feel but about it later. Not that he cared, unless it meant her piece wouldn’t be laden with innuendo.

"Our line is working out great," Avali added, pretending he hadn't heard her. "I know we weren't great today, but if you watched footage from our last game, I'm sure you would be asking different questions."

"Oh, I have, but isn't that part of the problem? How unstable your line? One game you are on fire, the next..."

Carry's heart stopped, then sped up double time as if to make up for it. But Avali just laughed in her face. "That's how it goes, kid,” he told her, and Carry didn’t even mind the alpha’s condescension that much. The woman had to be at least Avali’s own age. “You practice till you kill it and then you hope the wind doesn't change, or your karma is not unstable, or your chi isn't out of whack and messes it up."

And strangely, Avali had pulled it off, her lips were pursed but she seemed more curious than bothered by the brush-off. Carry could understand that it was hard to keep your mind on the subject at hand when talking to a half dressed man with pecs that seemed designed to be licked, but he was a little annoyed, too. "So you think it's just luck?" she asked, and her tone was mild, almost distracted.

Avali met her eyes. "I think it's stupid to assume working your arse off means you're going to win every time. At this level we're all excellent players, but whether that means we can be an excellent team in a particular game..." He shrugged. "Yeah, that's up to the gods. And I'm fine with that. I'll keep giving it my all, and they can do with it what they may."

 

&

Avali had taken over the interview without so much as a glance to check if Carry was okay with it. Carry made no secret of his dislike for reporters, but that didn't mean Avali had the right to take it off his hands like he knew what was best for Carry. He could hardly say anything about in a locker room open to reporters, so he went into a stall –teammates were one thing, strangers quite another—and got changed in record time. And then he was out of the building and home free, his teammates had stayed behind to go out for drinks —Carry felt kinda bad about ditching Alarski in his time of need— but he couldn’t cope with socializing after such a disaster. Not in the wake of playing and losing to the Titans a few days earlier. He was barely outside before he was texting Avali.

[What the fuck was that?]

The lack of response only made him angrier. He could feel his shoulders slowly growing tenser as the phone stayed silent despite knowing he'd left Avali in a room full of reporters eager for his attention and that as assistant captain, he'd most likely join the pity partying the team was sure to indulge in. He couldn't help feeling ignored anyway. On the ice, Avali would have looked his way as soon as Carry willed him to.

[What now] came eventually and Carry stopped short in the middle of a crowded street close to the station.

He closed the messaged and called instead. "You don't fucking take over my interviews! That's what!"

"What? But you were clearly uncomfortable and..."

"If you claim your instincts made you do it…" Carry warned.

"My instincts?" Avali repeated incredulously. "My decency! She was giving you a hard time and I just..."

"Do you think I'm not used to it?" Carry interrupted again. "They always give me a hard time, Avali, that's the deal if you are an omega in professional sports!"

"Well, it's not right," Avali snapped back. He wasn't making an effort to hide his irritation, and it was... it was nice that he was angry on Carry's behalf. And useless, completely, utterly useless because it wouldn't change a fucking thing.

"I can fucking handle it," he told Avali, startling a passing father into a glare —they could deal, it was too late at night for kids to be out and about, anyway.

"I know that, Johnson, do you think we didn't all watch your tape before you came over? That they didn't ask me if I could play with you?" Avali gritted out, sounding furious, but not at Carry.

Was he angry because they had felt the need to ask? Then something else clicked into place. "You said yes," he said it as he realised, like he’d lost his filter somewhere. He stopped by the gate, too lost in the conversation to risk dropping the phone to look for his travel card.

"Of course I said yes!” Avali replied, sounding almost offended. “I saw you play. And I had never... I..." Some of the winds seemed to have left his sails. "I didn't think it'd be an issue. For me. That you were an omega."

"Do you regret it?" Carry asked. He didn't mean to, it left him too exposed, but it just came out.

"Are you kidding me? Have you not seen what we can do together? I'm glad I didn't know better."

Carry hesitated. He couldn’t say it back. Not because it wasn’t true, but… “It’s worth it,” he finally blurted out. “If we can make it work, it’ll be worth it.”

&

It had been a terrible week, so of course, the moment Carry got home and had a minute to rest, his body rebelled. He rolled over, getting tangled in the covers, a fine sheen of sweat already covered his skin and he felt achey and sore, and… empty. He was hard, of course, but the feeling of emptiness prevailed. Normally he had a little time before it became the focus of the heat, was it… He groaned, panting, he didn’t care. He groped on the bedside table till he found his phone and dialled the number he’d saved. He’d memorized the ID number for the alpha he had decided on, and the person at the other end pretended not to notice that he couldn’t quite form complete sentences and told him his escort would be at the door in half an hour tops. He must have lost some time then because the next thing he knew was that the lights were flickering as the shrill sound of the bell woke him up. The alpha had arrived. Carry had no idea if it had been less than half hour, or a day, but other than his dry mouth and his wobbly legs, and the unbearable emptiness, he didn’t feel too bad. Well, not if he told himself relief was at the door.

He opened the front door before he realised that the guy was at the lobby and needed to be buzzed in, and then he did it without even checking it was him. The sudden blast of cold from the hallway woke him up a little, enough to get him to realise he was thirsty as hell and do something about it.

“Hello?” he heard, and let the glass fall into the sink. He was so hot the water had been almost a sensual experience. "Mr Johnson?" The voice was gravelly, deep and only when he turned around did Carry realise he had never asked for a picture. It didn't matter, of course, the scent of lemon pie hit him and his knees were already buckling. The guy crossed the room and took hold if him before he could fall. Carry blinked up at him in confusion before he realised he'd actually signed an agreement to let this man touch him. "You're really warm," the alpha said.

"It's... it came really fast," Carry explained and managed to straighten enough to stand on his own to feet before promptly falling forward into the alpha’s chest. There were a sliver of exposed skin against his cheek and after that…

He remembered the sex, and the alpha, Peter, getting him to drink and later eat as well, but it was much hazier than usual. Like he'd actually had a fever the whole time. He laid in Peter’s arms after it was over, sated but unsatisfied, and uncomfortable —his body needing the contact and his mind scrambling for something to say to the stranger running his fingers through his hair. He kind of wanted it to stop, even as it unwound his muscles even further than the sex had.

"Is this part of it?" He asked finally. Peter didn't pause and answered calmly, like he was used to strange omegas interrogating him after vigorous physical exertions.

"Yeah, an omega needs to feel safe after sex," he said, and to Carry, his eyes closed, he was just a voice, a scent; no face to match because he’d barely looked at him. He thought his eyes were black but he honestly wasn’t sure. What did it matter anyway? He wondered as Peter added somewhat ruefully, "And it makes me feel good to give you what you need."

"But you don't need to," Carry said, sleepily. He didn’t know why he was objecting.

Peter’s hand on him hesitated, but he didn’t stop. "No, it's just... a nice way to come down from the sex."

Carry could hardly argue with that, or with professional being attentive. Peter was being paid to help him, and it was natural he'd try his best to convince Carry to repeat the experience. It was good business. He curled up further and closed his eyes, he was warm and safe enough and his body had stopped its demands. He wanted to sleep; not because he was tired —he might have needed it, too— but because he wanted it to be time to get up and go to training. He'd paid his dues, and in the morning he'd be rewarded.

&

Sleeping with a stranger was odd mainly for how unmemorable it was. It didn't linger on his mind like his encounters with Pucio and Avali, didn't haunt him. And there were no reminders.

It was good. Except he still had to tell Avali.

He didn't owe him any explanations. Except that wasn't true; Avali had offered his help and Carry had accepted it. If he had found a better way, it only made sense to tell him. The real question was whether he could afford to. Whether they could afford him to. Could Avali cope without it messing up their game? The game that depended directly on how good their psychic connection with each other was?

They had just lost two games in a row, and they had one of the original teams coming up next. And it wasn't like Carry would go into heat again so soon, and to make matters even safer, it was a home game. He didn't need Avali when he could get the agency. Avali would get that, if something happened. Not that it would, he’d only see Avali at training once a day for three more days before they had to play and he’d just gone through a heat with Peter.

 


	16. The Truth Will Set You Free

&

**Keenan**

He was glad Johnson hadn't gone into heat for the last month. They'd had such a terrible time in the road, first with the Titans and then the fucking _Lions_ , suddenly growing teeth. And now they were short enough on points that the next game could mean getting eliminated and they were supposed to play one of the top teams in the whole league for it. Their collective karma was a mess, that was for sure. He wondered if he should try setting up another charitable donation, he certainly didn't have time to volunteer—not till the summer. It was a pity, too, because it was one of the few things other than skating that got him out of his own head, but unlike the ice, people expected some notice and consistency. The way they were training he counted himself lucky if he could manage to eat dinner sitting up instead of slumped against a wall or a sofa as he stared blankly at the TV, his brain still caught in the tape he and Sven reviewed almost as obsessively as they played.

It was affecting the rookies the worst. They were young and they had plenty of energy, but they hadn't learned to pace themselves throughout seasons of doing the job and it was showing on the circles under Santiago's eyes and Sali's noticeable weigh loss —coach had him drinking protein shakes before _and_ after games—, but the first one to miss a practice was Johnson.

Keenan hadn't thought Johnson looked particularly tired, lately. He'd seen him wince once or twice when one of the bruises Sven had reported must have got pressed, but that was about it. He showed up on time and played methodically and efficiently, working up a sweat without pushing it to the point where his cheeks flooded with colour.

It wasn't like Keenan would have missed that.

But he must have missed something because the day after the trip, which they had off, coach announced Johnson was missing practice that morning and afternoon. He hadn't explained why, and Keenan could hardly justify asking —if Johnson had been seriously ill, coach would of course had let them know.

And he was back now, looking a bit frayed around the edges —as could be expected this time of year— but otherwise just fine. He'd nodded at Keenan when he'd caught his eye upon entering the locker room and had got on with drills like the routine it was.

Then, when they'd stopped for water and a breather, he had skated over and taken a seat next to Keenan. "Listen, I was thinking... we have to show them."

"Show them?"

"What we can do."

Keenan frowned at him. He knew Johnson had a pretty low opinion of most people, but he knew reporters had noticed what they could do, he couldn’t imagine their coaches hadn’t. "Johnson, they have been seeing it in every game we've played. I'm pretty sure they _noticed_."

But Johnson had turned and met his eyes, up close and somehow bluer than ever. "We have to tell Thomas, at least. We can use a third player in on it. And we're going to need it if we want to even have a chance against the Penguins."

"Okay, Thomas. But nobody else... well, we could tell Sven," he conceded, keeping his gaze down so as not to see Johnson's face. Johnson's knee was quivering slightly till he got his last word out. Keenan looked up. "What?"

And Johnson quickly looked away himself. "Don't see why we have to tell Binker," he said, so carefully neutral it was impossible not to see it bothered him. "There's nothing he can do."

"You just wanted to tell the whole team!"

"What? I meant coach, and Thomas. Why would I want to tell our secret to the whole team?"

"They are our team, they wouldn't..."

Johnson snorted. "You think people need to try to slip and reveal a secret? People aren't good at discretion, they don't need to be arseholes, they can just forget."

"Is that what happened with the Titans?" Keenan asked, unthinkingly. Johnson straightened like he'd been electrocuted.

"I will speak with Thomas," he gritted out before getting up and getting into the rink.

So the topic was off-limits. The way Johnson had reacted to Pucio and Villiers, it was also probably true. Forget Villiers, Keenan wanted to kill _Pucio_. How could an alpha let this happen to an omega he'd...? Maybe Johnson was right about people in general being careless, but he couldn't believe it of an alpha. Alphas had instincts that pushed them to protect omegas and doing anything but had to be intentional, had to go against those instincts. And if Pucio had meant it, he had no excuse. And Keenan had no reason to forgive him.

 

&

Thomas nodded along as Carry explained, not appearing very surprised by the fact that his two linemates had a strong psychic bond. Thomas was a laid-back guy but Keenan had at least expected some… he didn’t know. Were they that obvious about it? Sven had already noticed he looked at Johnson too much, with scent it wasn’t that hard a leap to make, but that shouldn’t have helped Thomas.

"So you want to get me in on it?” he asked Johnson, he didn’t let Johnson take over their line –he didn’t have any underlying guilt to repress, like Keenan—but he was always willing to listen to him before ripping his ideas to shreds. “But how? I'm a beta."

Johnson licked his lips, glancing at Keenan, but they hadn't rehearsed this and psychic bond or not, Keenan had no idea what he wanted his approval for. "Avali is letting me direct his play," Johnson explained and Keenan suddenly understood his hesitation. It was true, but there was no need to put it that way. Thomas shot him a look.

"It's the way it works. Johnson is really good at this psychic stuff and I suck, so he... asks for what he wants."

"So that's why we keep using your strategies!"

"What?" Johnson blurted out.

"You guys always argue when we practice, like about doing the umbrella," he explained, turning to meet Keenan's eyes, but then in the game you both go for whatever Carry wanted." He shot Keenan a teasing smile. "I just assumed you had a crush, but..." He broke off, laughing at Keenan’s face.

Johnson wasn't amused, though. "I didn't mean to make you," he told Keenan, looking horrified.

Keenan looked away, cheeks still hot. "It's fine."

Maybe Thomas realised that he'll stumbled upon something with his joke because he drew Johnson's attention. "Well, you can't make _me_ , so we'll talk over things out loud, with words."

"Yes, of course," Johnson said. "I just wanted you to know that we're getting feedback from each other so you can plan for it."

Thomas frowned. "You mean if I pass to Keenan you'll know he has the puck? Even if he's out of your line of sight?" He checked.

"Yes," Johnson said simply.

"And you would know, too?" Thomas asked him.

"Well, yes, if Johnson wants me to know."

"Carry definitely wants you to know. Information is power!"

Johnson shrugged. "It's not that simple, if I'm going to shoot..."

"You want Keenan to have your back!" Thomas interrupted.

"Yes," Johnson gritted out, sounding annoyed, "but I'll be focused on something else. I won't need him so..."

"But you will!"

"You need him to keep the other team off your back. Is that the way it works? You need it so he does it so for you?"

Johnson shifted in place, and Keenan didn't need the smell of burning caramel to see he was uncomfortable. But he couldn't think of a better way to say it, and anyway, Johnson always got mad when Keenan tried to help him. "It's more like...if I want his attention and I let him see it... then he can do it."

It also wasn't a lie, except that it want just giving Keenan the choice, when Johnson asked or hinted or made it clear what he wanted from him, he wanted to do it for him. Keenan didn't think that was all him, but then, how could he tell? He obviously wanted Johnson to score, how to tell if he wanted it because of Johnson or himself, or both?

"You realise that just means I have to talk you into it now, right?" Thomas said.

And he was right, Johnson had said as much.

Johnson shrugged. "It's not that I don't see your point, but when I'm about to score I can't really divide my attention like that, and Avali will probably be following the puck anyway, won't he?"

Thomas opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Keenan, do you mind getting us drinks?"

It took Keenan a second to react, but it was nothing to Johnson, whose scent went sour immediately. "Yes!" he agreed a little too enthusiastically. He wanted to be out of Johnson's way before he let loose. Thomas was immune to scent and –as helpful as he’d been—Keenan felt no compunction about abandoning him to his fate. "Strawberry and cherry smoothies?" He checked.

"And banana," Thomas clarified, probably to delay Keenan, or not; he seemed completely unaware that he was about to be murdered. Keenan nodded and beat it out of the changing room, Thomas had just walked himself into that one and he was a grown man, he could deal with Johnson. Keenan was mostly confident the killing would only be metaphorical.

There was a permanent stand about two blocks away from the rink and he took his time walking there and back, and even deciding on which flavour he himself wanted. He ended up with watermelon, which was new and tasted sort of wrong after years of raspberry. By the time he got to the changing room again, he was quite reconciled to the sweeter drink. He could see himself getting to like it. And then he got a noseful of Johnson's caramel scent and he realised he wasn't just feeling adventurous: it was all part of his new craving. Fuck.

At least Johnson didn't smell pissed anymore and he could hear Thomas affable tones coming from inside, so not dead.

"Avali! Get in here!" Johnson called. It only made sense that he knew, but Keenan startled anyway, sloshing a little of his unlidded drink. He walked in, licking it up, other hand busy with the carrier with their drinks. Thomas snorted.

"Enough with the kitten act, give those here."

Their practice was amazing. He didn't know how Thomas had convinced Johnson but it was like he had gone from getting glances to being stared at. It was unnerving, but indubitably good for being in the right place at the right time to do what Johnson wanted. Except that Thomas wasn't happy letting Johnson direct _him_ around, and he apparently was determined to put an end to Johnson directing Keenan’s play, too. He stopped them after the first play and made Keenan suggest one, then forced Johnson to use it as a game plan instead of adapting it. Johnson fumbled a bit before he hit his stride but Keenan found it easier to play his own style and overall they got about the same performance. Next, Thomas contributed his own hypothetical scenario and countermeasures and they ran through that. There was nobody else on the ice, of course, and no goalie at all because they were practicing manoeuvres that required three bodies, just like in a real game, but Keenan left the ice feeling almost high, elated and a little dazed by what they had accomplished in a single session.

Thomas kept the chatter up as they walked into the changing room and Johnson responded in kind. Keenan hesitated when he noticed they were sitting side-by-side to change so they could continue their talk, but then he turned towards his own corner, far enough from Johnson that he didn’t need to keep his eyes on the floor not to accidentally ogle him. “Where are you going?” Thomas chipped, interrupting Keenan’s escape. Johnson had instinctively turned to look at him too, and when Keenan turned to face him, their eyes met. Johnson didn’t look away for a long moment, as if he was trying to read something on his face, and then,--so small Keenan thought Thomas could have missed it out of the corner of his eye—came a nod.

Keenan shook his head at Thomas. “Habit,” he explained, shrugging. Then he took the seat across from them, a good, maybe a good three meters from them. He did make sure to sit in front of Thomas and not Johnson, but his linemate couldn’t object to that: after all, he was still their interpreter.

When they were done, Thomas insisted they go out to dinner to celebrate and Johnson agreed readily, almost eagerly. Not that he shouldn't have, --awkwardness of changing so close to him aside—Keenan could feel the joy of what they had accomplished running through him just as much. He just wished he'd got to agree first; then he could at least been sure he’d done it because Thomas was a great guy and they were becoming a great line and not because any time Johnson was close, Keenan’s body seemed desperate to get even closer.

 

&

**Cartwright**

Thomas was a _genius_. Carry could have kissed him. He'd gone in between them from the beginning, like it was nothing, like he didn't _mind._ He'd got them talking to each other when Carry was so uncomfortable around Avali he could hardly look at him, and now... now he'd somehow pushed them past all that: After the way they'd played, Carry had found himself arguing with Avali without anger, and then, at the restaurant, teasing him good naturedly about the way he hadn't mentioned that Carry was moving him around like a puppet. Avali had looked so shocked that for a second Carry had thought he'd crossed a line, but then his teammate had rolled his eyes and shot right back that he couldn't be faulted for Carry being a control freak.

He hadn’t meant to do it, to direct Avali’s play to the point where he was suppressing his own great ability and characteristics as a player. It was just that nobody had prepared him for meeting his One True Pair, or for dealing with a bond beyond telling he’d know instinctively how to deal with it. He didn’t. Carry’s instincts seemed exclusively streamlined for moving on the ice and finding the right angle to shoot from, there was nothing there about how to deal with a man he was highly attracted to, hormonally driven to fuck, and personally unsure about. It was too much information, half of it contradicting the rest, the rest of it impossible to interpret. And it made him angry, too, that his body was pushing him past rationality, past any kind of control. Of course he’d wanted to control Avali; he was the one making _Carry_ lose control. But he hadn’t meant to do it, and he wasn’t going to do it again —thank the Universe for Thomas— even if it meant being a little stilted on the ice for a bit. He loved hockey with all his soul, but it was _his soul_ , not Avali’s. He didn’t have a right to it, no matter how compatible they were. He didn’t care if his ability to compel Avali by asking him to do things was the most natural thing since going about naked: he was _never_ crossing that line again.

And it was just one more reason why having anything personal with Avali was a bad idea: what if he did something like that off the ice? He was so grateful for the agency and Peter, for the freedom it gave him from his own bodily needs by letting him separate them from his real life. If he didn’t _need_ Avali, there was no reason Avali should feel compelled to give him anything. And with Thomas on the ice, whatever strategic positioning he needed from the centre forward, he’d get only in a controlled environment, with Avali’s consent. Avali might be consenting to Carry making rapid-fire unspoken demands during games and practices that he’d instinctively know to follow, but he had still agreed to it.

If anything, he needed Thomas just as much –for his peace of mind _and_ for his hockey skills— and he was just fine needing his teammates on the ice. Talking to Avali normally helped too, as did allowing him close; not just letting him change a scarce couple meters away but taking his comfort when he’d offered it. Talking to Avali over chips about which of the other teams sucked more, he could almost believe that he wouldn’t freak out if Carry told him about the agency, about not wanting him to help during heats anymore. Avali _had_ said he was monosexual, his sexual interest in Carry was much more artificial than any of the plays Carry had steamrolled him into. He might, Carry speculated, even be grateful to know he’d not be put in a position where his instincts overwhelmed his own preferences. Carry never quite forgot about the secret he was keeping, but then, that was why you didn’t sleep with teammates. Except heat made Carry stupid, well, it made everybody stupid. Legally it was a mind altering substance and neither omegas nor alphas could sign contracts under its influence. Last month there had been a huge fuss when a university student had been kept from making a large withdrawal from her bank account to pay for her deposit because one of the managers was an alpha and he'd noticed she was in the early stages of heat. The girl had ended up in a hostel –and Carry could hardly imagine anything worse than spending a heat in a semi-public space— and her parents were suing the bank for endangering her.

Nobody had more than hinted that the law itself was the issue, though. Of course omegas couldn't be trusted to make decisions during heat. And could Carry honestly object? He'd endangered his career for sex once, and after suffering pretty much the worse consequences, heat had pushed him to do it again. But... he had wanted to have sex with an alpha. Sure, the desire came from heat, but he'd decided to do the same thing and contacted the agency while perfectly sober. Would he have paid an alpha to have sex with him in a bar? Maybe, maybe he'd have done it even if he wasn't a millionaire. But he hardly thought the issue came up for any omega in heat, alphas didn't even care that much about sexual orientation or preferences when they had pheromones as an incentive, so why would they ask for money? Maybe it made sense to demand omegas didn't drive or use heavy machinery while indisposed, but get money from the bank? Nobody was forbidden from getting money out for medicine, were they? Hell, if you were a drug addict and had the funds, you could show up high and the teller had to give you your money.

But not omegas. Omegas needed protection. From themselves especially.

Thomas elbowed him, subtly but not gently, and Carry realised coach had just addressed him. The man glared, obviously realising Carry hadn't been listening.

"Are you with us, Johnson?"

"Yes, coach."

He forced his head back on the game, and after a few moments, it was easy. Hockey had always been easy, even when nothing else had been. Not even Avali’s steady presence in the room could change that. And then they were skating into the rink to the announcer’s voice and the sound of the home crowd going wild for them. They needed all the encouragement they could get against the Cascades, who were pretty much guaranteed a spot in the finals, and their fans knew it. But Carry found he wasn’t nervous. He couldn’t be, remembering how the addition of Thomas had solidified the one he had with Avali, how suddenly it hadn’t simply been intense but a true back and forth, Thomas insisting on both of them talking over plays with him. He understood that in the middle of a play there might be time to transmit a thought or a sensation but not to find someone’s eyes, but he’d pointed out that if all of them knew the play and only Carry or Avali had the puck, then the other should be able to spare a second to communicate with Thomas.

And it worked. It wasn’t easy, but Thomas’ insistence was almost like a presence of its own –odourless and invisible— and Carry found it easier than he’d imagined to go back and forth between the preternatural way he made Avali aware of his position and intentions and the usual body language he’d perfected to communicate with teammates during a match. He forgot how much Avali knew, sometimes, and wasted time shaking his head at him and meeting his eyes, but it happened less and less the more they practiced. And anyway, he figured it was a good decoy to have in case anybody was watching for it.

The Cascades’ formation was beautiful. They had the kind of knowledge of each other that only came with time and endless games and practices; in comparison, Carry’s ability to predict what his own defenders would do seemed woefully lacking. Of course he knew where Avali was, in fact, he was desperate enough to open up enough that his scent must have been projecting his desperation loud and clear to anybody and everybody on the ice with a nose for it. And he was still holding on to Thomas, the practices the three of them had sneaked in paying off –either Avali or him signalling to their linemate, but that was about it. He scored off one of the plays they’ll practice so frequently he’d gone to bed mimicking his moves in his mind and the team surged around him like he’d won the match. The Cascades were two points ahead and with two minutes left of the second period, there wasn’t much hope they could bridge that gap, Carry’s line was good together but they’d only been training in their new half-psychic formation for a week, they simply hadn’t had time to perfect a number of different strategies. Their focus had mostly been on trying to keep Carry from overreaching and learning to signal to Thomas.

Thomas pulled them aside on the bench when Bauer, Patel and Diego went out to play. “Are you guys doing your thing?” he asked in a whisper, not that anybody could have overheard with the way the crowd was going wild –the Cascades fans were _loud_.

Avali nodded. “We _are_. Johnson’s giving it his all,” he assured their right-winger almost earnestly.

Carry shot him a surprised look, not that there was any chance Avali wouldn’t notice… It was just nice to be acknowledged, he guessed. “We just don’t have enough plays, we never really practised,” he explained, wincing as he saw the Cascades disarm Patel’s play with a swiftness that made their teammate look almost child-like. Patel wasn’t even a veteran, not really, at twenty-six he seemed old to Carry, but he hadn’t reached the height of his potential by any means.

“We didn’t practice enough,” Avali said, his face grim, “but it might be better than nothing.”

Thomas clapped him on the shoulder with a mad grin. “Let’s do it.”

It was a few more minutes before Bauer got a hit hard enough that he had to take a breather. Coach switched the whole line, Carry’s spirits lifted: there was quite nothing like hitting the ice on a power play, and it was one of the Cascades’ defenders out for the next two minutes, too. Thomas’ eyes flashed briefly at Carry. And Carry understood: a shot from a surprising angle from close up was his speciality. He skated out without even looking at Avali –who’d just won the face-off—, but of course the pass came sailing smooth and perfect onto his stick, so smooth that he didn’t even have to pause before shooting. The goalie stuttered, having had his eyes trained on Avali, about a meter closer to the goal than Carry was himself and the goal lights went purple. Carry felt more than heard himself laughing over the roar of the crowd, and almost without realising he was back on centre ice. Before they were allowed to move, he pulled on Avali, asking for the next two moves so he’d know the play and got in return the salty scent of a drying salty water –if they’d talked about scents, Carry would have teased him about smelling like he was literally burning when he was playing his best for the Flames. Carry would be in charge of signalling to Thomas, and he needed to do it as soon as Avali stole the puck and got out of his way. Avali moved, and promptly lost the puck to the Cascades star centre, Siritha Rochester. Thomas didn’t look Carry’s way, instead going for the puck with almost violent determination and just like that the play was falling apart. But, against all odds, Thomas did swipe the pack from under Rochester’s stick and skate away with it, Avali was already skating backwards to received it by the time Carry wised up and turned to block the path of the defender just returning to the ice. And then there was Molierre, way too close to the opposite goal for safety. But he was grinning almost maniacally and he gave Carry a friendly shove in passing to send him back to fight for the puck. Carry listened, speeding up towards goal where he already knew both Thomas and Avali were headed without even looking. They were passing to each other as little as possible and as precisely as if they, too, had a psychic bond. And then Avali’s next pass went Carry’s way, straight to his stick between the Cascader’s right-winger’s legs. By the time the guy turned Carry was halfway down to the ice, but the defenders weren’t likely to underestimate him again, they were already crowding the goal. He already knew exactly where Avali was, but with the ice so crowded, he wasn’t sure about the rest of the players. It took a split second to register Thomas was right across from him and only pretending to be standing behind the left-winger while he held his stick straight –ready to swerve and overcome his rival—and then Carry’s arms were doing the rest, sending the puck flying bright and fast with more force than he usually had. It smacked on Thomas’ stick with a thump and Thomas shot. Hard and brutal. And it rebounded with an out of control spin, except if it was out of control, it was damned lucky, too, because right that moment, Avali managed to lose his escort and shove it back towards goal. The d-men had already advanced to try and get the rebound and it went it in: gloriously purple and loud.

He skated right into Avali's arms, and their bodies slotted together like Avali knew exactly where he was coming from. Even with all the pads, it fed the adrenaline running through Carry like oil spilled on a fire. It burned so bright he actually turned his face to Avali for a moment, helmets knocking. Seeing his own joy reflected in his dark eyes was heady enough it took him a moment to process the weight and noise of the rest of his team pressing close, and then Avali was laughing, openly and loud and so close Carry could feel his warmth, and then their helmets knocked together again and he realised he’d leaned forward. Not just forward, he’d raised his head to bridge the height difference between them; he froze, eyes skittering away from Avali’s smiling face, feeling about three arms over his shoulders and smelling Avali like his nose was simply filtering out the sweaty mass of bodies and guiding him towards the only scent that mattered.

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

& 

 **Keenan**  

It was only natural that the press would start paying them more attention after such an unexpected victory. The Cascades had seemed so shocked by their success that they hadn't even got angry. Keenan remembered shaking hands with Rochester, who was one of the older players in the league and a legend in her own right even before she'd led her team to two consecutive cup wins. She'd looked at him like she was trying to figure him out, but she'd seemed intrigued, not resentful. Keenan had played her before but never been even close to winning --loyalty aside, the Flames were a young team, still finding their stride-- and it was very different shaking your childhood hero's hand when it was she who gave the congratulations. 

There was only one problem with their miraculous victory: it meant the press was eager to interview them both. It was fine after the game itself since it was pretty much a series of variations on 'how on earth did you do that' and 'do you think you can do it again'. And the week after, Keenan didn’t mind talking Coach into giving him the bulk of the interviews, but –as coach kindly pointed out-- Johnson had to do some or the press would invent a reason as to what he was hiding. 

They couldn’t keep reporters from being interested, — _people_ from being interested— in the player whose arrival had changed the team’s dynamics so dramatically. Johnson hadn’t made much of a splash with the Titans, they claimed, but something had clicked with the Flames –and none of them even needed to say what had clicked was Keenan, it was beyond implied at this point, and it was, incidentally, also _true_. Keenan was desperate to be there for him, just in the same room, but even if Johnson would have allowed it –and Keenan didn't need to ask to know how unlikely that was-- he didn’t need to be told that being openly protective of Johnson was the worst thing he could do for his teammate’s career, not by people who didn’t even know the extent to which Keenan had compromised him.  

Johnson had asked, more than asked, really, even if he hadn’t been thinking clearly. But Keenan had said yes, and he couldn’t help but feel responsible for it. The team meant everything to him, the _A_ meant something, too, and it wasn’t just making sure the rookies stuck to their physio or didn’t get taken advantage of by rabid fans while drunk. His team were his family and every instinct in him screamed at him to protect them at any cost, from anything.  

He had offered to protect Johnson, but wasn’t he putting him at risk? If Johnson was found out sleeping with an alpha that’d be one thing, but if it was a teammate… Keenan wasn’t stupid, he might have been a little naïve about how far the press would go, but he had known all along that Johnson’s reputation wasn’t like his own. He couldn’t ask about Pucio, he had no illusions that Johnson would do anything but tell him to mind his own business –if he was feeling up to that level of politeness— and he’d be right, but by now the suspicions he’d been harbouring since the game with the Titans had solidified into a dreadful certainty. And if that was true, if Johnson had been sent packing because he and Pucio… The last thing he needed was to go through it again. With that in mind it was less surprising that Johnson had warmed up to the team at all than that it’d taken him months to do it. Keenan had never played in another professional team and the idea of being traded filled him with unspeakable dread despite the fact that there was no chance the Flames were even thinking about it. What would it be like to have your first team drop you like that because of something that had nothing to do with hockey? And they’d kept Pucio, of course they had, even though the guy was about six years older than Johnson and had clearly taken advantage of his rookie. Even though for all his inexperience, it was Johnson who had the makings of game winning player. 

He couldn’t even ask why Johnson wasn’t being more careful this time around: the expectation that an omega wouldn’t have sex with an alpha –any contact they had with a beta was overlooked as insignificant— till they were ready to bond wasn’t baseless. Or at least hadn’t been disproven yet. Omegas swore having sex for the first time sent their sex drive into overdrive and that being without their mate for long was awful –exactly the reason Keenan hadn't let himself even contemplate serious dating. So Johnson had gone ahead, probably listened to those wackos who claimed it didn’t do anything to an omega to sleep with an alpha, or just been a kid all alone and so desperate for it that he hadn’t cared. 

And now he was stuck. Keenan had once caught his cousin at the beginning of his heat, dark eyed and looking like he’d got run over. He’d dropped by with the groceries his aunt had told him to deliver, not thinking to warn him the reason Shain couldn’t get his own food or order delivery wasn't a bad cold but that he didn’t trust a supermarket or pizza place not to send an alpha –if there were ever teenagers with a need for speed it was alpha kids, full of repressed aggression and confused longings.  

Shain had laughed at him. “Don’t you always say you are monosexual?” he'd asked with a knowing smile. He hadn't even known Shain and he were compatible, but since he _was_ monosexual all Keenan couldn’t muster was pity for the circles under his pretty eyes.  

“I didn’t realise auntie Mira believed me,” he admitted, more amused than anything. There was not an ounce of doubt left in him by then that men would never do anything for him in bed. 

“Guess she does. Or she forgot your mum’s adopted again,” Shain shrugged, eyes sliding lazily over Keenan’s torso before he tore them away and muttered an apology. “Can you put those in the kitchen?” 

It had been so easy to resist the little twinge of freshly baked bread scent Shain exuded, so simple to stay for a bit and heat up some food for him. It'd never crossed his mind that confronted with a higher degree of compatibility, his mind might not be enough to resist the pull of his body. 

And now it'd got to the point where he couldn't even tell anymore: was it hormones making him offer Johnson what he had? Was it merely the protective instincts over his team making him desperate to check on him if he missed a single practice? 

Not that it mattered. Whatever he was feeling, and whatever its source, he had no right to expect anything from Johnson. 

 

 **&**  

 **Cartwright**  

Something was working. Thomas had started it, sure, but Avali was definitely putting his own hours on their partnership. Carry found himself smiling at yet another smoothie materializing for him, and Avali didn’t look shocked or stunned, shrugging it off with a half bashful twist of his hoodie-clad shoulders. It was a team jacket, probably because Avali couldn’t be bothered finding clothes on his size and only hockey teams thought to account for arms like his. Carry couldn’t miss the attraction still pinging between them, but it was like they had silently agreed to let it be, to shrug off the lingering glances and –in Carry’s case— the way Avali’s scent turned a room into a mini beach when Carry walked in. Sometimes Avali would shoot him an apologetic glance and Carry would shrug a ‘What’cha gonna do?’ and distract himself talking to someone else. The few times when Thomas had failed in his mission to play interpreter and they’d been alone, he’d tamped down on his own scent and started talking about hockey. Avali usually settled as soon as the word ‘goal’ came up and while they didn’t meet each other’s eyes that often, a lot of the time Carry could honestly say it was because they were busy looking at a piece of paper where they were diagramming plays. 

He’d never called off their ‘deal’ and Avali never even hinted that he was wondering how Carry was passing his heats. But of course it couldn’t last. Two months after they had last slept together, they had a week-long trip scheduled and on the very first night, there was a hesitant knock on his hotel door. 

“Hey,” he greeted, unsure. 

Avali was looking past him at the room, dressed in his usual jeans and a blue shirt that made his coppery skin glow. “Can I come in?” 

And Carry could see this was not going to be a chat about the latest formation. Fuck. He moved out of the doorway and waved him in. Avali actually took the armchair in front of the fireplace –they were in Florence and it was April so it was not cold enough for a fire even if the hotel hadn’t used eco-friendly central heating, but Avali was staring at the logs like he could see something in there anyway. 

He exhaled noisily, hands locked between his knees and whole body braced for something. “I’m sorry about this. Things have been great lately, the last thing I want is to fuck that up.” He shot Carry a glance as if to assure him of his sincerity, but he did it too fast for their eyes to catch. 

“Then don’t,” Carry suggested, still on his feet. He was fully dressed and he was barely repressing the urge to cross his arms. He hadn’t even closed the door fully. It wasn’t like he was afraid of Avali; the guy was a bit of a prat sometimes, sure, and entitled, but he’d never touched Carry without being asked or tried to order him around except that time in the corridor –and even Carry could admit going out alone at the height of his heat was bloody stupid. 

Another heavy exhale before Avali went for it. “Okay, so I’m going to ask. And I don’t need… I’m not asking because… I just need to know you are going to be okay,” he finally blurted out, words scrapping out like they were razors past his throat. He was hunched over like he wanted to curl up on that armchair, t-shirt tight enough Carry could see the line of his spine. He wasn’t angry at the question, but he was disappointed, he’d hoped they were past this, somehow. It had been stupid to think they could understand each other without words here like they did on the ice, not when Carry spent most of the time he was in a room with Avali squashing everything he felt far down enough his teammate wouldn’t catch it. 

“Why now?” he asked, even though he'd practically promised himself he'd tell Avali months ago. 

“Last trip… I mean, I don’t know, I think it’s all the time we spent together?” Avali straightened a bit, tilting his head like he was trying to look at Carry but not actually turning far enough to manage it. 

“Fuck,” Carry swore, feeling irredeemably stupid. “I thought it was the kiss.” 

“That…" Avali hesitated, "probably didn’t help.” 

“So you think you’re going to trigger another heat?” Carry asked, mind rushing with possibilities. What was he going to do? The agency was flexible: could they fly someone compatible over to wherever Carry was when his exposure to Avali finally caught up with him? 

And that got Avali to turn fully to him, he looked like there was nothing he wanted more than to get out of Carry’s room and Carry had to hand it to him, it took balls. To admit to the feeling, and to stay. And the only reason to do it was that Avali cared. And he wasn’t stupid, it wasn’t about the team. If it had been, Avali could have just waited till Carry’s heat hit and he had no choice but to call him, it’d take him less than a night to have Carry back in shape for playing and he’d get to… But apparently that wasn’t Avali’s priority. His eyes were dark, stormy like the sea at night and his lips pursed, frustrated, Carry thought. “I… I read a little, proximity to a compatible partner can make it more likely.” 

“And we’re a hell more than just compatible,” Carry agreed, letting himself slump against the door, hearing the lock click at his back like a shot. Avali didn’t say anything and when Carry looked up at him, he was just waiting, his face an open offer. Carry wasn’t sure what the offer was; sex? But again, why warn him about it if that was the end game? “Do you have any ideas?” 

“We could each skip some meals,” Avali offered, eyes skittering away like he couldn't handle talking to Carry and looking at him at the same time. They'd been doing so much better at that lately, too, Carry thought regretfully. 

“Okay, yes, let’s. Anything else?”  

Avali’s mouth trembled before he blurted out what was eating at him. “You have had a heat since then, haven’t you?” 

“Yes,” Carry said, simply, no apologies or explanation. He didn’t owe him anything. But he couldn’t help but tense at the way Avali’s scent went bitter, almost rotten. He must have been aware of how obvious he was because he brought a hand to his face and rubbed his eyes, breathing heavily but hiding his expression from Carry. 

“Okay,” he said, voice so rough he had to swallow before continuing. “So you have someone.” 

For a second, Carry thought about denying it, about explaining about the agency. And then reason reasserted itself: this was exactly what they needed, a barrier more impassable than their own determination to do the right thing. Avali wasn’t an arsehole, if he thought Carry was with someone else... And sure, Carry would still know how close he was and how much better sex with him was than with Peter or Josia, but he could be kind. He could let him go. It wasn’t even kindness, really, because he needed Avali as a teammate too much to risk it for this or any other reason. He didn’t need a lover. And that was all Avali needed to hear to stop wondering if he’d find Carry out of it in another corridor. “Yes.” 

Avali flinched at that, his whole body contracting like he’d been hit. “Fuck,” he said, an apology of sorts, or maybe just an expression of pain, his voice sounded hoarse. “I’m sorry, I don’t… I’m not…” He was breathing hard and his scent was loud and clear about how upset he was. 

“It’s fine, I get it, your body thinks it meant something else,” Carry told him, as gentle as he could manage. “It was the same for me,” he added, he owed him that much and it felt good to give a little truth among the fiction, a bit like an apology for what he was doing. For the way he was hurting him, unintentionally and for his own good but hurting him nonetheless. “But it’ll go away,” he promised, to both of them, really, because it didn’t really help ease the need to stop. It didn’t make him feel less guilty, or make Avali’s obvious pain less agonizing to watch. “And then we can focus on hockey.” 

Avali didn’t answer right away, still breathing raggedly against his own palms. Carry’s whole body was demanding he comfort him, and he grabbed harder onto his own elbows and waited it out, like pain, ignored it like he’d trained himself to ignore the pain of a stich on his side or the sting of sweat in his eyes. It wasn’t so different. Outside of heat, his body was under his control. He could resist the impulse to eat, or sleep, or rest. Or touch. He wasn’t going to touch Avali. And he didn’t, but after a long minute it became evident that Avali wasn’t managing to pull himself together, that somehow, maybe the shock, he wasn’t managing to wrestle control back from whatever physical or... whatever had him hunched over. Not long enough to return to his room, not long enough to tell Carry anything. He wasn’t crying, that Carry could tell. But he was still covering his face and he’d started shivering slightly, like he could hardly bear to keep his position on the armchair. 

He had to do something. And then he realised: he couldn’t offer comfort, not the type Avali really needed. But he could give him time and space. “I’m going down for a drink,” he announced. “Just… let yourself out whenever. I’ll hit the arcade after so…” 

He left it at that, and picked up his phone and wallet from the dresser, not bothering with a jacket. It felt gut-twistingly awful to leave someone like that, much less someone he… He wrenched the door open and slammed it closed too hard behind him, but he needed it. The relief of that solid piece of wood between them was almost enough to send him to his knees, but he didn’t let himself. He had told Avali he’d be gone, he couldn’t stay in the fucking corridor like a stalker now.  

By the time he made it to the bar downstairs, he really needed that drink. 

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started this, Keenan was straight, but later on I decided that in a world where bisexuality was the norm, that's not a term people would use. Instead the opposite of bisexual is monosexual, sometimes contextually someone might clarify the gender to which they're exclusively attracted but the point is that they're deviating from the sexual norm of not discriminating by gender. As part of that deal and mpreg existing, binary gender roles are much weaker that in our world, too. An alpha would be expected to notice an omega or another alpha more than a beta, but not to pay particular attention to the person's gender.

**&**  

 **Keenan**  

It was physical. A hormonal surge after heat sex, an evolutionary trick to make alphas go back to omegas they had slept with and, presumably, impregnated. His body didn't know about contraceptives, couldn't understand that they had made a world where casual sex with omegas was okay. And it was just his body, because _Keenan_ never had had an issue with casual, even when he'd wanted something more permanent, he'd been able to do casual easily. And it couldn’t be anything else because Keenan was _monosexual_. And even if there was some truth about what bisexuals said that getting to know someone made things like their genitals completely irrelevant, Keenan didn’t know Johnson. Not really. They shared space and they talked about hockey, that made them colleagues, not friends, much less… It was simply absurd. Johnson was right; his body was insisting that this was a catastrophe, that he had to get Johnson back.  

But his body was an idiot who hadn’t thought Keenan could do a hundred reps when he was eight. He’d told it to fuck off because hockey required it, and now he could it again. It had been wrong then and it was wrong now. He could do this, he could get over the utter sense of wrongness, of betr… he could and he would, if there was something he wasn’t lacking on, it was willpower. 

He’d gotten back to his room somehow and fumbled the door open quickly enough that he’d collapsed on the bed and not the floor, so utterly exhausted he felt like someone had unexpectedly removed his batteries. 

And then he slept, and his body betrayed him again, his dreams filling with hands and lips and a scent sweeter than anything. And then he woke, in the dark, Johnson’s smell still in his nose, his taste on his lips. He knew he was imagining it, but it tasted real, it smelt real... But it was just a dream. 

Johnson wasn't at breakfast the next morning and, although they'd made no formal arrangements, Keenan talked Sven into having lunch at a little local bistro known for its sea food. But even if it worked well for their hormones, it seemed to make the shock of seeing him that afternoon in the locker room all the worst for Keenan. Sven didn't say anything but there was no shushing Santiago to keep him from asking why Keenan had gone pale. He made up a stomach bug, too boring to awaken more than passing concern. 

He kept his eyes down while he changed and didn't catch more than a glimpse of Johnson until they were on the bench together. Patel's line was starting today and Keenan was happy to cede some of the protagonism, but he'd have preferred it if Thomas hadn't got them into the habit of sitting together in their line. At least Thomas took the seat between them, both directing the conversation and keeping space between their bodies. 

"He's getting better. His stick handling has come along way since I first came," Johnson was saying. Keenan was almost certain he was speaking about Patel but he'd lost the first half of his speech to the sheer relief of hearing his voice. His scent was muffled, maybe more than was usual for him on the bench, or maybe Keenan was just that pathetically desperate for a whiff of it. 

Thomas elbowed him. "What?" He asked, even though he was pretty sure they were still commenting on the line, if not Patel himself. 

Thomas rolled his eyes at him. "Wake up, Keenan, we'll be on the ice in a minute." 

& 

Feeling Johnson open up to him was like being drenched after laying in the burning sun for hours. He almost tipped right over, barely managing to take his position on centre ice, and when he lost the face-off, he felt Johnson's surprised disappointment like a slap. It only got worse from there, Johnson asked and Keenan wanted to give, but it didn't matter if Johnson signalled for his own plays or Keenan's, or even Thomas'; the feeling of him so close to his mind was doing a number on him. He had been fine with it for months, but now, suddenly, it hit him what it _meant_. Sven had said it before: a psychic connection, the same thing that eventually could become a bond, but somehow Keenan had ignored that. Somehow he'd talked himself into pretending that having Johnson's mind touching his was no more intimate than sharing strategies over a table or a glance over the ice. It was utterly insane, and now that it had clicked in his mind, he couldn't forget it again. 

What the hell had he been thinking? He'd spent months strengthening a psychic bond with an omega to the point where he'd set off that omega's heat and slept with him despite not being attracted to men. _Twice_. And he'd been so worried about him afterwards that he'd needed to go to him and ask about his sex life to be able to sleep at night. And of course, his reaction to the news that Johnson had someone else were the most telling of all. The thought felt like he thought being stabbed would, a sharp pain that left him unable to breathe for a long moment, and then a dull ached that never quite faded, an emptiness in the pit of his stomach no food could fill and no sleep could make him forget for long. And after that, he'd _planned on doing it all over again_. 

"Avali, are you sick?" Johnson's voice was high and concerned and his face was a picture of confusion. He must have been able to read him pretty clearly, Keenan didn't have the first clue about how to hide his scent and he was so upset he couldn't have visualized his own mother's face. Patel's line was on the ice, hastily sent out by coach when his starting forward had fallen apart for no apparent reason, and Thomas was on Keenan's other side. Only then did he register that Johnson wasn't simply close but sitting next to him. He never did that. "Avali?" He repeated, his alarm spiking. Why was he still projecting? 

"Stop," he begged, rubbing his head. "I don't... just stop," he repeated, waving with his other hand towards Johnson's own head. A single beat and he had some damned relief as Johnson inspired and the heavy presence of his thoughts vanished entirely. 

"Is something wrong with the... connection?" Thomas whispered. 

And how was Keenan supposed to explain that the connection was exactly the same but _he_ had changed, he'd seen something in it he'd been ignoring all along and now he couldn't stand it anymore? How were they supposed to play without it? He couldn't do this to them, to the _team._ If he asked Johnson to stop projecting, they would lose. 

"Thomas, can you let us talk for a minute?" He heard Johnson ask. It wasn't like Thomas could go far, but Johnson must have judged it far enough because he spoke again, close enough to Keenan's face that he could feel his breath, "What's wrong? I can feel... I know you're upset," he explained, and Keenan must have given something away because Johnson started apologizing, "I can't _help it_ , you're projecting like crazy, you smell... Am I doing something? I've closed myself off completely, can you feel it?" 

Keenan managed a nod. "So what is it? You were fine, we were..." He trailed off. "Oh, fuck, it's because I told you." 

And there was very little point in Keenan even answering, the way they were almost touching, there was no way Johnson could miss a thing. His heavy exhale brought his breath into Keenan's noise and he realised that he had been tilting his head slightly towards him, desperate to catch a hint of his scent even as he'd _asked_ Johnson to hide it. He was so _fucked_.  

"No, no," Johnson was saying and Keenan thought that only his voice could have penetrated the haze of his mind in that moment, "no, don't... don't freak out, Avali, please." But it was like begging the tide, Keenan could feel his breathing coming faster and harsher, and he didn't even know what he was freaking out about, in the middle of a game no less. And then Johnson hesitantly offered, "I... I'm not seeing anyone." 

It felt like a shot of electricity to his spine and he'd raised his head to stare at Johnson before he'd even processed the words. "What?" He asked, voice harsh like he'd been screaming.  

Johnson's cheeks were stained red and his eyes flickered away. "I thought it would... it would make things easier." He shrugged. "Just one more reason we shouldn't." 

"But it's been..." Keenan objected, and Johnson shook his head sharply.  

"No, you've snapped out of it, great, so now _get your head in the game_." 

Keenan blinked at him and glanced around, there were two minutes left in the second period and nobody had come to ask what was wrong with them. He met Thomas' eyes a few meters away when the man turned to look at them, no, to _check_ on them. A warmth gratitude suffused him at the thought of his teammate, and when he turned to Johnson again he felt a little more grounded. He licked his lips. "Sorry." 

Johnson waved it away. "Can't be helped, are you okay now?" He was still close and his blue eyes looked serious but concerned. Had he ever really been all that cold? Keenan couldn’t get a wisp of his scent or his emotions but he was seeing them clear as they in Johnson's face.  

He nodded, then warned. "I don't know if I can do the..." He waved at his own head. Johnson's alarm was written plain on his face, but, to his credit, he didn't say a single word about it except to ask if Keenan wanted to give it a go. 

He hesitated, than shook his head, feeling like he ought to apologize. Johnson nodded, then offered, "We know each other much better now. It'll work out." 

They went in for the last shift, getting weird looks from Patel's line on their way, and Johnson was both right and wrong: they did know each other, Thomas included, much better than they had the last time they'd tried to play without the connection. But it didn't work out: not because they weren't capable of it, Keenan knew, but because they'd never _practiced_. It had been a stupid oversight, and as he missed another shot, he thought about telling Johnson to give him enough to be able to find him on the ice faster, but just the idea made his stomach turn. He felt like an addict being offered a hit –desperate for it and knowing he'd never be able to stop if he started—so he didn't say anything, And didn't say anything. And then they were even, and then they were one point behind, worse than Patel's line had left them, and then two points behind and the gods took pity on them because the time was up. 

His eyes met Johnson's across the ice, and his linemate made an awkward gesture upwards. He blinked, then realised what it was: the sign for gods. Except it wasn't true, he thought, turning away from Johnson's empty comfort, because he hadn't given it his best. For the first time in his life, he'd been too afraid to get hurt to give hockey his all. 

 

& 

 **Cartwright**  

He expected Avali to request a private chat as soon as they left the ice, instead his centre seemed too lost in his own thoughts to remember Carry was in the room at all. It was stupid, but it stung. He'd spent years wishing to be free of the attention and the looks, but he'd come to expect the weight of Avali's very carefully averted gaze. And now, even Avali's scent was subdued. He was so unsettled by it that he didn't notice Thomas until the other man dropped heavily on the bench next to him, and then he startled badly enough to earn a raised eyebrow. 

He shrugged. "I'm knackered," he explained and went back to his socks. 

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" 

"Bad day," Carry responded.  

"You don't say?" Thomas almost hissed. He elbowed Carry not that gently, like he'd forgotten they didn't have pads on, but Carry refused to look up. "Don't try and bullshit me, Johnson. I can't read anybody's mind, but I don't need to. He's all..." Carry elbowed him right back and looked up just so he could glare. 

"Do you understand what _discretion_ means?" He asked, suddenly furious. He had no idea what was wrong with Avali, but he didn't have the energy to indulge Thomas' curiosity. 

Thomas didn't back down, though. "Something's wrong," he said very quietly, "and I can help." 

Carry glanced around the crowded room, Santiago was goofing off –probably trying to cheer them up-- and most of the room was laughing at his antics. Not Avali, he noted, eyes drawn to him. He was rubbing his shoulder absently, where one of the opposing d-men had knocked into him hard enough that Carry would have ended up on the ground if it had been him. "How can you help? Do you even know what's wrong?" 

"No," Thomas readily admitted. "Do you?"  

Carry sighed, giving up on the pretence of tying his laces thrice. "Yes, but I can't talk about it." 

"Why not?" 

"It's private, and it's not mine to tell. I can't... I mean, I'm not reading his mind, but I get a lot of what he's feeling. I can't go babbling about it." 

"What if he agreed?" 

Carry blinked at him. At least that meant Thomas hadn't guessed how messed up things had got between Avali and him. "Look, I know you mean well, and you've helped a lot..." 

"You know why?" 

"Because you're a good guy?" Carry tried. 

Thomas rolled his eyes. "I mean: do you know why I can help you?" He explained, and immediately answered, "because I'm not inside this weird little bond you guys have. I'm not _affected_. I can actually think about what you are saying without getting all distracted by the way you smell, or don't smell. I'm not very clear on what's worse on Avali's book." 

It was news to Carry that Avali might mind not being able to scent him when he pushed his emotions down. He'd have thought it would be a relief to get a break from the constant barrage of someone else's emotional state, but then again, what if you knew the other person could read you perfectly and you had to guess what was going through their mind? Thomas nodded. "You didn't know that, did you?" 

"How do _you_ know that?" 

"I have been watching you guys practice using that bond for weeks, Johnson, it doesn't take a genius to see Avali goes all uncomfortable when you either start transmitting or stop." 

It was so obvious, really. What could an observer see in their faces when they were talking about the connection out loud? Carry didn't need to look Avali in the face and he'd grown used to avoiding it: it was intimate enough to be getting what the guy felt, he didn't want to see his dark eyes light up or dim, his lips curve in happiness or form angry words. "It's not a bond," he gritted out. 

"Great, then it's part of your working relationship, and you gotta admit I'm the expert on that." 

Carry almost flinched. Thomas had gone above and beyond, he couldn't deny that. "Why won't you let me sort this out on my own?" 

"Oh, you mean you were going to do something about it?" His linemate asked. "I figured you'd just go home and hide and come back tomorrow for practice and hope whatever's bothering him will be gone." 

"That's not... that's not fair." 

Thomas hand landed on his shoulder. He never hesitated to touch Carry, and strangely, it was something he treasured. The casualness of it. "Listen, mate, I'm happy to let you deal with it. _But_ deal with it, don't put this off, don't make up excuses, don't take a break. I'm here for the long run, and we have a real chance to make it to quarter finals if we don't fuck this up. And we need you guys. With psychic powers or without, but at your best." 

Carry didn't think there was any chance they could be at their best without the link, but he nodded his assent anyway. He could promise to try, at least. 

& 

He didn't text Avali, he walked up to him without making an effort to hide the normal amount of scent any omega would exude, that any alpha would pick up. Avali frowned up at him from the bench. "Come on," Carry told him, "we have to talk." 

They went to a restaurant and Carry asked for a private table, then ordered food and drinks and asked not to be interrupted. Avali didn't say a word that wasn't on the menu, not even when they were finally alone. 

"I'm sorry I lied to you," Carry blurted out. "I just, I figured it'd make things easier." 

"It's fine, you don't owe me anything." 

"That's not true!" Carry said. "I... You're my teammate, and you offered me help. You _helped me_. And I just used this thing to play better hockey, I didn't even think about what it could do to you." 

"You asked me if I wanted to use it," Avali pointed out calmly, except he didn't smell calm, he smelled resigned and Carry's hands were shaking with the need to reach out. And then Avali met his eyes across the table, concerned and open, and Carry realised he'd got so used to his own scent being hidden he'd just given away his anxiety. "Are you upset because we lost?" He asked with a frown, and Carry snorted. 

"Have you met me? Am I upset because we lost? Of course!" He almost snapped. "But I'm more worried about what I started by using the... the bond," he added firmly, what was the point in calling it something else? It wasn't permanent, but it was a psychical connection based on their high compatibility. 

Avali swallowed thickly, gaze on the table, then said, quietly but decisively, "We." 

"What?" 

"We started. You're not taking all the credit for this, Johnson," he explained, and he was trying for casual and failing miserably. 

"Do you think..." He started to ask, then shook his head to himself. "I think we need to stop." 

Avali's head snapped up, alarm written all over his face. His scent wasn't any better, bitter and salty at once. He didn't want to. It warmed Carry to know, and he almost pulled back to hide it before he simply set his eyes on the table and allowed the blush to bloom with his emotions. 

"You don't want to," Avali said, wonderingly. "You..." 

"I have instincts same as the next guy," Carry interrupted. "It doesn't mean it's a good idea, or that I _want_ to. If we're not careful..." 

"We could bond," Avali finished, and the longing in his voice made Carry shiver. He knew exactly what Avali was feeling and not because of his scent, because Carry felt it, too. He shook his head almost violently and got up. The room they were in was pretty small and clearly reserve for romantic dinners, there were candles all round and flowery details of obvious expense. Too small to pace. He'd been thinking of a business room, the kind with lots of leather and maybe a bar where his dad had sometimes taken Carry along when he'd been little and his father had imagined he'd follow him into business, or politics. But of course anybody receiving a request for privacy from an omega and an alpha had assumed... He exhaled, then rang the bell for service without looking at Avali. 

The server was an omega, of course she was, in a moment where Carry could have used the privacy of an oblivious beta.  

Avali thanked her warmly and she blushed, and Carry only barely managed to hide his flare of possessiveness. Maybe it had been a terrible idea to do this in private, after all. But how else were they supposed to discuss it? Were they meant to have Thomas sitting between them? Missing half the conversation that they weren't voicing and offering sensible solutions to a problem that had nothing to do with sense?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late updating, hope the cliffhanger was worth it :p


	19. (For we cannot deny) neither mind nor heart

& 

**Keenan**  

He had to down half his glass of port before he could get the words out, "I don't understand what's happening to me." 

Johnson didn't look up from the aperitif he was tearing to shreds, and he'd hidden his scent again –because of the server, Keenan thought, and he couldn't blame him from wanting to keep emotions like this from a stranger, but he wanted it back. He needed something to go by so he could tell if he was messing up, if he was completely wrong... Johnson had said he didn't want it, yes, but his scent had put a lie to it. He could feel the pull of the bond, _the bond_ , it felt good to call it that. True, for once. "I'm monosexual, I've never... not even after we... I don't like men like that. I just can't see anything in them," he felt like he was insisting too much, but Johnson didn't interrupt and of course Keenan had no clue what he was thinking –his face was blank as a canvas and so was his scent--, and then he had to say the words that were really troubling him. "Except you." 

Johnson's knife made a screeching sound against the porcelain as he put it down. His lips were pursed when he raised his face to look at Keenan and if he was trying to hide his worry, he was failing. "Yes, because of heat. During heat." 

Keenan inhaled, feeling like he was about to jump off a cliff. He opened his mouth to speak, then realised he couldn't say the words. He shook his head instead. He wanted to look at Johnson for his reaction, to see if in the heavy silence from the other side of the table was shock or... But he couldn't risk it. His heart was beating so fast it was painful and his hands had fisted on his knees. 

"It's..." Johnson sounded chocked now, but Keenan couldn't tell what emotion was halting his words. 

"Stop hiding," he gritted out, suddenly angry. It wasn't really Johnson's fault that he'd decided to do this, but it felt like it, it felt like Johnson had the power to hide and using it _against_ him. He darted a glance up at his companion. 

Johnson's eyes widened in shock and his scent flared up before he pushed it back down with visible effort.  "You said... I can tell you what I mean. You don't need..." 

He'd reacted to the order, Keenan realised, half horrified but then he remembered that it was he at a disadvantage here, it wasn't Johnson whose feelings were exposed for all to see. "You're _not_ telling me, and I'm not telling you. You can... it's not fair." 

"I'll teach you," Johnson offered, incongruously. 

"What?"  

"I'll teach to hide your scent, then..." 

"Then you won't have to put up with my messy emotions?" Keenan offered bitterly, and pushed his chair back so hard it toppled behind him, clattering on the wooden floors. 

"No!" Johnson said, getting to his feet as well, "I just want to make it fair. You said..." 

"I told you I have feelings for you," Keenan spat, "and you _changed the fucking topic_." 

"Feelings?" Johnson repeated. "Is that what you call it? You want to _fuck me_. That's not a feeling, Avali. That's your fucking instincts. And it's nothing new, is it? I've been pretending it's nothing for months!" 

"But you can feel it, too," Keenan said, "you... I thought you didn't, you hid all of it from me, and I thought..." 

"Instincts aren't feelings," Johnson repeated. "And I definitely don't let my cock control my life." 

"You're not in heat right now," Keenan pointed out. _Reasonable, be reasonable._  

"No, but we're still compatible, and you still remember what heat was like, you don't think that's skewing your perspective a little?" 

"Sure! So what? We're not talking about a banking investment, why shouldn't I be biased? Feelings aren't a calculation. And what does it matter if it's only because of the heat? It's still true. I still want you." 

Johnson flinched like he'd been slapped and when he met Keenan's eyes, his own were blazing. "Well, forgive me if I want a little more from a partner than them liking the way I fucking smell when I'm out of my mind," he gritted out. "But you're lucky; if you've such low standards, you won't have any trouble finding candidates!" 

"I don't want anybody else!" Keenan almost shouted. 

"Tough," Johnson replied, quiet and final, "Because I'm not interested." 

And then he let his scent flow free: bitter and burnt and so awful Keenan recoiled. He wasn't lying. If that's how Keenan made him feel, the strange thing was that he hadn't asked to be moved to a different line altogether. He slumped forward, bracing his arms onto the table to support his weigh. He had known. He had known Johnson didn't want him, didn't like him, but this... disgust was too much. 

He didn't look up when Johnson got up and walked out, he couldn't bear it, even though Johnson had pulled his scent back under wraps, the memory of it felt seared into Keenan's nose, the emotions seemed burned into his very soul. 

& 

He didn't pick up when his phone rang and only discovered the call had been from Sven when he casually checked the time hours later. He'd been staring out his huge living room window for three hours by then, past the sunrise and past his time to shower too. He was trying to figure out if it was too late to return the call when his phone pinged. It wasn't Sven but with the phone on his hands, his eyes just followed the words before he could decide whether he wanted to read them or not. 

[Are you up for psychic lessons? Thomas says he'll come.]  

Keenan stared at the text like it'd come from outer space, and who knew? Maybe it had, it certainly sounded nothing like the man who'd left him in a private restaurant room to get drunk off his head the night before. 

[Afternoon.] he sent back, only legible thanks to autocorrect. 

[4?] came after a few minutes. 

[4] Keenan echoed in agreement, and then rolled on the bed till he could reach the analgesic drops in his bedside table. 

& 

Morning practice had never been this awkward, not even when Keenan was a stupid rookie and he'd showed up not having slept at all. Sven had sat by him in the changing room as soon as he'd walked in. "You look like shit," his captain had commented, sounding concerned. 

Keenan couldn't blame him, he didn't know how he was going to get over this. "I feel like shit," he'd said, simply, honestly. Sven was his friend. "Can we talk about it later?" 

Sven had hesitated. "Should I tell coach you're going home?" 

Keenan shook his head; he knew if he left the ring now he'd not be coming back for Johnson's lessons and ironic as it was, Johnson's lessons were possibly his only hope to survive Johnson himself. "Just... swap the lines around or something." 

Keenan didn't need to look at his friend, Sven's alarm was clear in the bitterly sharp turn his scent took. "Okay," he said, "you got it." 

Being on the ice with Johnson, even on opposing lines, felt like trying to skate without actually looking where he was skating. He didn't score a thing and he thought he might have actually stopped Thomas --still on his line-- from scoring by getting on his way. 

Coach stopped him afterwards and interrogated him about sleep, food and rest. Keenan made all the right noises and all the right promises. He had no idea if he'd fulfil them because as soon as the words left his mouth, they also left his mind. 

And then the others were gone and he was left alone with Thomas and Johnson. 

Practice had never been this awkward before, of course Keenan had never been openly and decisively rejected before and then gone and tried to learn something as intimate as scent-blocking from that person. Thomas was there, as promised, and he sat in between them in one of the conference rooms hidden in the recesses of the rink. He was texting a bit too much to be considered a proper chaperone, but Keenan was almost grateful he wasn't paying close enough attention to the unbearably formal instructions Johnson was delivering and at the way Keenan couldn't make himself look him in the face. 

Johnson was a good teacher, much less impatient than he usually was on the ice and with his own scent completely muffled, Keenan could almost pretend he was anybody but the guy he'd propositioned the night before. Keenan could take someone not being into him, he was attractive but nobody was everybody's type. What he couldn't take was that Johnson was attracted to him but disliked him enough personally that the idea of dating disgusted him. 

But he was okay, he could do this, he could learn anything for hockey. If he didn't look at him. "Okay," Johnson was saying, and his voice didn't help any but he still had the same ability to command so contrary to his omega orientation, that soothing tone that made Keenan... "Count with me, and imagine yourself stepping back." 

Keenan closed his eyes and did as he was told. 

One. 

Two. 

Three. 

Four.  

Five. 

He closed the door in his mind, turned the lock till it clicked. And then he opened his eyes and met Johnson's. He hadn't meant to, but once he saw the smile breaking on his lips, he couldn't look away. "You did it!" Johnson got to his feet in his excitement, but Keenan couldn't move. Maybe Johnson couldn't tell what he was feeling, but there was no such escape for Keenan; it was clear as day on Johnson's face. "And you said you were bad at this!" Johnson added, midly chastising but satisfied. 

Thomas clapped him on the shoulder, almost making him jump out of his skin, but it helped because in his surprise he turned to look at his right-winger and that got Johnson out of his direct line of sight. Thomas' grin disappeared when he saw Keenan's face. "What's wrong?" 

Keenan shook his head, licking his lips and trying to come up with words. It felt strange, almost like he was holding himself really straight and his spine was about to pop. "It feels... it's odd," he offered, careful not to turn his head in Johnson's direction again. 

"You get used to it," the omega promised, still sounding cheerful. "Now let's undo it..." 

"No," Keenan decided, and pushed against the table to get up. "I'm fine, really," he told Johnson's shoulder. "Thanks a lot. I'll take it from here." 

"But..." It was Thomas who objected, and Keenan turned and gave him a weak smile.  

"It's my mind, man, I'll let you know if I need any more extra training." 

And that was all he could spare before he needed to get out of there. By the time he was out of the building, he realised he hadn't thanked either of them, and Thomas -at least- definitely deserved it. But they were his teammates, they'd forgive him a little rudeness, and he honestly didn't think he could physically make himself get close to Johnson again. 

It had taken him re-injuring his shoulder during rehab by overdoing his workout for him to understand: sometimes you simply needed a time out, it didn't matter how inconvenient the timing or how expensive the penalty. If you didn't take it when you needed it, it'd just fester inside you, expand until it _forced_ you to rest. And by then it was usually too late for anything but medical leave. As a rule, Keenan wasn't the kind of person who needed to take days off for his mental health --he was much more likely to get slammed over the boards or have a bad fall-- but he knew the signs, and right then they were _flashing_. 

He didn't tell Coach what was wrong with him exactly, just that he was feeling too sick for practice and that he wasn't coming in the next day either. Unsurprisingly after his pathetic performance on the ice that day, Coach gave him the go ahead without asking any more questions. 

& 

Two days, he'd promised himself two whole days to get over this bump. He could have afforded more, his brain argued, but Keenan wasn't going down that rabbit hole. If he let himself be afraid of seeing Johnson again, he'd just keep finding excuses for it. There was nothing scary about Johnson: the guy had shot him down, sure, but it wasn't like nobody had ever rejected his advanced before. It hadn't happened in a while, sure, what with the fans and the general state of fitness playing a sport professional left him in, but it wasn't unheard of. And he wasn't such an egomaniac that it hurt him for its own sake. It was just that it was Johnson, and Johnson could... Johnson knew him, he had to: he spent more time keeping track of Keenan's mind than the puck, it seemed sometimes. What did it say about him if someone who’d seen into his brain, someone who admitted to being attracted to him, too, wouldn’t even consider dating him? It was pretty impossible not to take offense. Except that was not how dating worked, he knew that, nobody was obliged to like him. Not even the guy who’d happily fucked his brains out twice and spent his days mentally steering Keenan on the ice. 

But Keenan had made no promises either. He didn’t have to let Johnson in.  

That night he got a text, except soon it became clear that it wouldn’t be just the one. 

[Don't sweat it. I know hormones can be a bitch, and you know it isn't real because you think I'm a bitch.] 

[Sorry I freaked out] 

[It'll be better now] 

[You're a great player and a good guy too.]  

And then, a couple hours later. 

[Just some space and we'll be fine. We'll make quarters and then we'll get the summer.] 

Keenan didn’t reply, he didn’t think he could manage anything conciliatory and he couldn’t quite make himself back down and the take out Johnson was offering with the hormones comment. It was stupid because till the very moment that he'd asked Johnson out, he'd sworn to himself that it _was_ all hormones. He'd promised himself he wouldn't let his body rule him and then he'd realised that he didn't just want to sleep with Johnson, he wanted to _kiss him_ , and talk to him. And hold him. Hold onto him. And he knew it was the sex and the connection, no, the _bond_. Johnson might not want it, but that didn't mean it wasn't real. And the bond had just been the beginning. He knew they'd gotten close in a weird way, and that a lot of the time they were close in ways that didn't involve talking. It was the opposite of what dating was supposed to be like, but it didn't make the intimacy less, it didn't help how it felt to know Johnson was with someone else, worse, to know Johnson wasn't with anybody else but he'd lie about it to get rid of Keenan...  

It would he been easier if it had just been a bizarre sexual urge, even if it was his and no longer the exclusive product of heat. Maybe his hormones had led him to Johnson like a moth to a flame, but, probably just as stupidly, it was Keenan who wanted to stay. He couldn’t pretend it was instinct that had almost reduced him to tears when Johnson had told him he was seeing someone. The alpha instinct should have been to anger, not sadness.  

The sense of betrayal was all Keenan. It was a lover’s reaction, not possessive, just hurt... Because he didn’t just want to fuck Johnson, he wanted to be chosen by him. 

& 

In the morning of the second day there were several more texts waiting for him when he woke. 

[If we’re playing with a handicap we really need to practice] 

[you’re not really sick, are you?]  

[nobody else can really catch my passes consistently] 

[not to say you’ve to stop being sick just because I need your hockey skills] 

[but if your vitamins kick in, you’re welcome to join us] 

[Thomas says hi] 

[I don’t know what the hell I’m doing but if you tell me how to do better I’ll try] 

[sorry, forgot the time] 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long hiatus, I've been alternatively sick and working on another story with a deadline. As you might have noticed, I've only posted a single POV/chapter. I'm thinking I'll start doing now from now on to keep things dynamic.


	20. Regret & Control

 

**&**  

**Cartwright**  

 

When Avali finally showed up for practice, he claimed he’d had the flu, then got changed without giving any signs of it. Carry knew he was lying, not due to any psychic abilities on his part. Either Avali hadn't been trying in school, or he'd just needed proper motivation because he'd picked up psychic blocking as quickly as he picked up hockey moves. No, he was just very aware it was his own fault his centre had missed practice for two days. 

He was determined to do better. Avali’s scent remained muted even as coach directed them to practice with their lines –this time Sven didn't suddenly decide to move Carry out of Avali's, which he figured had to mean something good. Carry kept his own at the same level, not as muffled as he could but exposing him about as much as Avali himself had decided was acceptable. It was like playing with a different person: Carry still knew where he was, like with any alpha, but he couldn’t tell what he’d do or let him know what he himself planned with a quick visual or imagined movement in advance. And not doing it was hard, he had to hold himself back from it consciously every moment and it distracted him from the puck and made him clumsy, too, leading him to hesitate in the very moments when he should have been decisive. After a few minutes of missed passes and false starts, coach actually stopped them to ask what was wrong. Carry leaned against the side of the rink, unable to come up with an answer, till Avali intervened, “The flu, I’m still a bit out of it,” he explained.  

Coach gave him a sceptical look, not looking convinced in the least. “Well, get back into it,” he suggested forcefully. “I’ve never seen you play this poorly.” 

Avali turned and sped into the ice but Thomas grabbed Carry’s arm to hold him back. “Did you forget to update your beta again?” he asked. He was only half-teasing. 

Carry pulled a face. He’d been trying so hard for one teammate that he’d completely forgotten the other. “Only in that we are not doing anything psychic. I’m giving him space.” 

“This is you playing without magic?” Thomas asked, sounding horrified. 

“It’s not magic,” Carry gritted out. “And this is us playing with a handicap. We’ll get the hang of it once we stop expecting to know more than we do.” 

Thomas shook his head, “Well, you better get on that fast. I’m not staying late to make up for your latest drama.” 

“Don’t worry, you won’t have to,” Carry almost snapped, and then he was skating into the ice towards Avali. 

They were going to have to do this the old-fashioned way: words. 

“Avali,” Carry’s voice was muffled by his helmet but audible enough, but Avali didn’t react till he called him loudly for a second time. 

“What?” 

“We need to talk a lot more,” Carry explained, trying to keep his irritation from his voice. 

“Okay,” his centre easily agreed. “What about?” 

“Everything, like, you need to signal to me like we do for Thomas. Let me know which play you’re going for.” Avali nodded, he wasn’t looking Carry in the face and, after the last few weeks of gradually relaxing around each other, it felt like an evasion, not politeness. “I’m willing to stay late if you are,” he offered. He couldn’t ask Avali again to tell him what to do, not in person, not when Avali could pitch his voice a certain way and Carry’s brain would freeze till he actually obeyed. He'd actually done it the other night, just because he was upset that Carry could tone down his scent and he couldn't. He'd seen Avali's surprise and he didn't honestly think the alpha who had never even hinted at trying to order him around had meant to do it. But he could. And it made all the difference; it was the whole reason Carry was into the mess he was to begin with, really. He wasn't going to have a relationship with someone _could_ order him around, no matter how decent they appeared. He was definitely not going to bond and go through an actual ceremony signing his life away, like it was romantic to change his name and announce to the whole world an alpha had him on a leash. 

Avali’s eyes flickered his way too fast to make eye-contact, and then he shrugged his bulked up shoulders. “Let’s just try again. Number 4.” 

And they tried. Thomas was the only one not completely at a loss, but even he was having trouble adjusting to how completely out of sync Avali and Carry were. He kept looking at whoever was closest for a read and finding them as lost as he was. 

Words weren’t doing shit for them.  

Coach wanted to talk to them after practice, naturally, and he had nothing good to say even though they had actually made some progress. The kind of progress a new line could be expected to make looked nothing short of pathetic for three players who had been playing together for months and who’d adapted to each other's’ styles with remarkable ease to begin with.  

It was Thomas who finally got the tirade to stop, he had the charm to do it. “We’re staying a bit longer, coach. Just a glitch, promise,” he said and coach seemed to believe him, somehow, when he hadn't believed Avali. Or maybe he decided they had fallen apart too spectacularly for it to be anything but a glitch. Carry knew that from the outside they had to look like completely different player; their dynamic stilted and hesitant where a week ago they'd played a game against one of the strongest teams in the league and _won_. 

“See that it is,” he pronounced, and left them.  

Thomas waited till they were alone on the ice to turn to his linemates. Carry had never seen him look grimmer. “Now, I’ve put up with a lot. Ups and downs and fucking sideways from you, too.” He turned from Avali to meet Carry’s eyes. “You are not fucking up our line before the quarter finals. That’s it, you’re not. Tell me why you aren’t using your mental mumbo-jumbo. I thought we had that tutoring lesson to avoid this.” 

Carry swallowed, hesitating, and Avali spoke up instead, “The mumbo-jumbo is fucking with my head. I asked Johnson to give me a break. But you don’t have to worry, I won’t ask for the game, everything will be back to normal.” 

“How can you know that?” Thomas demanded, unrelenting. “You do realise we practice _for_ the game, don’t you? So that the fuck-ups happen now and not then.” 

As closed up as Avali was, Carry was watching him closely enough to see him swallow. He almost choked when Avali met his eyes. “You up for a demonstration?” 

Carry nodded, mouth dry as sandpaper.  

After they scored on him thrice in three minutes, Thomas grudgingly admitted they still had it. Avali had been happy after the goals themselves, but his mood went right down after they stopped moving and by the time they made it to the rink door, he was all muffled undertones and vague discontent again. He wasn’t angry, not at all and not at Carry, but it felt that way. He felt cut off and rejected and… Sad. Which in itself was sad, considering. But he wanted it back. And it was just stupid because it wasn’t his to have back, it’d never been his, no matter how many times he’d fucked Avali or how many times their minds had brushed together and set their bodies in perfect sync. 

They weren’t even friends, not really, and if Carry wasn’t careful they weren’t even going to be teammates anymore. 


	21. Chapter 21

&

**Keenan**

 

The game went well, if not brilliant. They won, which was the point -even if points wise they could have done better. Johnson and he were open enough to get their amazing passes on, to make it work. And he didn't mind too much, during a game neither of them had much time to feel anything that should have been private anyway. And it helped a little, stupidly, because he'd got used to the bond, the pulling and pushing and just... the presence of another person closer than close on the ice. It was probably bad for him, for both of them, but it didn't feel that way –he supposed junkies said the same thing.

It was a little harder during practices with the team because it’d quickly become obvious to all of them that their coaches weren’t going to ignore their performance during training just because they were scoring during games. And it looked plain odd --just like that reporter had pointed out, too—that they could play like they were being handed karma by the gods one day and fall stumble around the next. And odd was the last thing they could afford with a secret as big as theirs.

So Keenan gave Johnson the go ahead for what they called ‘level 3’, not the level of openness with which they played but not the 1 that reduced them to merely sensing each other’s presence. So far Coach Hernandez was buying it that they were slowing down during practice to be better able to analyse their play. And in reality, the lessened awareness helped them learn what they actually needed to know: how to play without the bond.

It wasn’t what Keenan needed: a complete break from Johnson’s mind, but he was making do. And it was better, even though they scheduled private practices twice a week with Thomas when they were playing locally and, all in all, Keenan was spending more time with Johnson than ever before. Strangely, those times when Johnson was pretending to be a beta and Keenan was doing his best to muffle his own mind were the most awkward. Keenan couldn’t quite explain why the absence of Johnson’s baseline emotions should disconcert him so; Johnson had been hiding from him for months now, only little glimpses of his real emotions escaping through the bond here and there when he really lost it.

Only watching Johnson talk to Thomas over smoothies the next day, it came to him that it wasn’t Keenan throwing off their interactions. It was Johnson who had the handicap, and he was dealing with it poorly because he just wasn’t good at reading people. He’d just turned to look at Thomas with a little frown, but if he’d missed Thomas exasperation it was probably because he tended to stare out the window while they talked, or look past his head. Thomas sighed, and repeated it in a long-suffering voice Keenan realised he’d heard him use with Johnson before. “As if we need luck.”

“Oh,” Johnson said, smiling a little at the backhanded compliment to their team. Thomas was right, if they kept it up, they wouldn’t need it.

After he saw it once, he couldn’t stop seeing it: Johnson would lapse into long pauses, then sometimes ask for clarification, and often it was because he wasn’t looking at his interlocutor in the face. Other times it was the speaker’s tone that went right over his head so that Keenan could almost see him wondering if it was a joke. Their teammates didn’t seem surprised in the slightest, although some of them were more patient than others.

Keenan had never noticed before, too concerned with Johnson's brash manner towards him, but now that Johnson was going out of his way to be cordial, if not outright pleasant, Keenan didn't feel like he had to look away every time he caught even a glimpse of him. It was also easier to look at the guy when he wasn't afraid he'd be able to feel half of what Keenan was feeling and guess he himself was the cause. Not that there were many secrets left when it came to what Johnson made Keenan feel but there was knowing a person remembered an embarrassing moment –or several—and there was knowing you were embarrassing yourself anew every time you set eyes on them.

He didn’t think Johnson was dumb, at all. The guy spoke three languages --which he liked to show off in their trips because Johnson didn't have a modest bone in his overly-talented body --, and he had a strategic mind Keenan delighted in even when he was driving him up the walls trying to combine moves from several different teams without taking into account the actual skills they had as players. Mostly, it seemed like he was distracted, lost in some world of his own. And then there were the times when he paid attention, like on the ice, and his laser-sharp focus transformed whatever he was doing into an art form.

It wasn’t something he really wanted focused on him, regardless his confusing craving for Johnson himself, but of course, by refusing to let him read his mind, he’d cut Johnson off from his main source of information about Keenan. And Johnson hated not knowing what was going on, he'd got that much early on. So Johnson started listening. Not just when Keenan spoke about hockey but when he talked about himself, too, or even when he got into friendly arguments with Sven or some other teammate around him. Johnson had always made a point of staying out of range before, now Keenan found him leaning close, often looking elsewhere but with his head tilted Keenan’s way. And then they’d try and plan their next private training session and Johnson would frown at him and point out, “but you can’t on Wednesday, you’ve a physio appointment.”

And it was true. Johnson didn’t do half measures; when he thought he knew something, he was usually right about it.

“Gotta go,” Thomas announced, getting up from the corner booth they always took over. Keenan looked up at him and he shrugged. “I’m seeing this guy,” his teammate confessed almost shyly.

Keenan raised his eyebrows teasingly. “Seems to me you’re more than seeing him.”

“Oh, shut up, it’s still pretty new.”

“Is this the lawyer?” Johnson asked then. He wasn’t one for teasing --when he did try, he normally caused general hilarity--, but he always seemed more up-to-date on Thomas’ love life than Keenan.

“Yeah, public defendant. Total sweetheart.”

Johnson laughed. “That’s exactly what comes to mind when I think about lawyers,” he commented wryly. He was good at that dryness, his natural tendency to look down on everything and everybody made his remarks sharper than Keenan could ever manage himself. And somehow, because Johnson was half dismissive of the world as a whole, the joke could be a little sharp without becoming aggressive.

“Hey, it takes all kinds!” Thomas protested, and he was zipping his jacket already. “Anyway, see you guys tomorrow.”

 

&

 

After Thomas had gone, Johnson actually turned to Keenan instead of getting up to follow. Keenan didn’t know why _he_ hadn’t tried to leave, but it was too late now. It’d make things awkward. “How many people has he dated since you met him?” he asked, still smiling a little.

“You think I keep count?” Keenan asked.

Johnson snorted. “Fair enough,” he conceded. “I guess I’m just jealous.”

Keenan froze for a long second and he saw Johnson stiffening out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t think he’d meant to say that.

“Yeah, betas have it easy,” he said in his best relaxed tone.

“Word,” Johnson said a moment later. “Except for the cool psychic powers,” he added, shooting Keenan a brief smile.

Keenan smiled back. What they could do on the ice was worth considerably more than being able to date most people you met, he could give Johnson that.

If it was disconcerting to be the object of such focused interest, the fact that it was Johnson --who had spent the previous five months of their acquaintance alternating between ordering Keenan around and pretending he didn’t exist, with small bouts of amazing sex-- moved the whole thing from unlikely into hallucinatory.

Disturbing as he still found the idea, Keenan almost looked forward to the times on the ice when Johnson was allowed to project freely, when Keenan himself didn’t need to slam the imaginary door to his mind. It felt natural, which he supposed it was, seeing as that’s how alphas and omegas were meant to interact. On the ice, there were no questions, no awkwardness or confusion, it was all easy and smooth. On the ice, Johnson didn’t miss a single thing, and even if Keenan didn’t have his ability with the bond, Johnson’s newfound sense of fair play meant he was letting a lot more slip than he’d ever before. Now Keenan got the intense rush Johnson felt not just from goals but from little daring manoeuvres that paid off, and even from Thomas’ or Keenan’s moves --especially if Johnson had helped, but often just for the sheer beauty of them.

Some days, it felt like leaving the ice meant leaving the real Johnson behind, like without the bond he was literally cut off, out of Keenan’s reach. But Johnson had said no, and when he thought about it rationally Keenan knew he’d done him a favour. He couldn’t bet his whole future on his hormones being right about him liking a guy, and this guy in particular was a teammate, too. It was just too many risks for too few rewards. Whatever Keenan’s dick thought, he was too smart to fall for it.

 


	22. Little liberation

**&**

**Cartwright**

Talking was hard. Carry had never been much of a social butterfly, but he’d never felt it as keenly as he now did with Avali. Being around an alpha with whom he was highly compatible had distracted him from how easy it was to understand him. For months, he’d been so focused on Avali trying to control him, and on Avali's attractiveness and the consequences to his own libido that he'd ignored his ability to complement what Avali was saying with what Avali was feeling --at least his strongest emotions and reactions-- but now he bloody well noticed. It was impossible not to. Now if Carry wanted to know what the hell was going on with Avali, he had to listen. And it wasn’t that he wanted to know –he thought he might have been able to give that up—but that he _needed_ to if they had any chance of learning to play together without the bond. And, again, they _had_ to because keeping the bond going, even only on the ice, meant Carry was going to go into heat again, and likely as not, end up on Avali’s cock again. The image made him shudder as he was inevitably brought back to the feel of it.

But it wasn’t the sex he missed. Or at least not just the sex. He missed how easy it’d been to be around Avali, how… accessible his emotions had been. He had never liked Avali before, but he’d been able to know what to say and what to do with a certainty he’d almost never experienced before –he didn't like to think about the way he'd felt so comfortable with Pucio, too.

Avali had always brought out too many contradictory emotions to be simple, but he’d been difficult because Carry hadn’t been able to decide if he wanted to fuck him, strangle him, or push him to execute the play Carry was thinking about. It’d been in Carry’s head that the real battle was waged. But now it felt like Carry was trying to talk to him through a broken phone –only half the words getting through. Even worse, half of those words seemed to be in a language he didn’t speak –because without the echo of Avali’s emotions, he couldn’t figure out what his facial expressions meant. Not that he felt up to looking him in the face that often, either. He couldn't quite get over what Avali had said, over the way he'd fallen apart _for him_.

But still, even when he did look, it was so strange to be missing the feeling behind his smiles that he couldn't make Avali's features alone tell him if he was teasing or pleased. Or he could, to an extent, but he could never be _sure_ , and the knowledge that there was a way to know and he wasn’t allowed to use it was driving him crazy.

But betas managed without, didn't they? So he tried harder, he listened even when Avali wasn’t speaking to him and he asked questions that weren’t about hockey and --like anything done consistently and regularly-- it helped. Sort of like crutches would help with a broken leg, but at least he was moving forward.

They were technically spending as much time using the bond as before, but it seemed Avali’s ability to block his mental presence the rest of the time made a difference to Carry’s brain or body because he hadn’t gone into heat for almost two months. It should have been a good thing, instead he was jerking off so often he was afraid he was going to strain his wrist and he was so frustrated anyway that he had almost called the agency to ask if they would send someone even if he wasn’t in heat. He wondered if there were some type of regulations for that. Was paying for sex okay only as long as the sexual need was bad enough to send you to the hospital if left unattended, but it wasn’t okay if it was only regular blue balls? He didn’t think it would make a difference to the alphas working for the agency. After all, non-heat sex with an omega should still feel good to them and the payment they received would cover the bills, too. But it seemed a little too much, a little… sad. He didn’t want a relationship, sure, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find someone for one night. He felt fairly confident about his ability to muffle his scent, but not confident enough to bet his career on it, or he'd have never ended up in this mess in the first place. But betas couldn't tell either way; and at this point with rumours flying about him and Avali, it might even be a good thing if he was caught in a beta bar making time. Then articles about them would stop subtly speculating about whether it was their amazing 'chemistry' that made their line so unstable, great one day and a mess the next one for no discernible reason. They didn't even seem to care that the Flames had won the last five games they'd played; two days earlier some upstart from a new sports publication had made a joke that their celebrity couple name would be really awkward.

The main reason he'd never bothered was that he’d never met a beta he was attracted to before, but someone else’s hand had to help and a cock was a cock even if he needed lube to get it in. It was worth a shot, if nothing else to get out of his apartment.

 

&

 

The club was too dark to really make out much beyond outlines, but Carry guessed he could use those to guide his way and get a clearer picture from closer-up. There were some alphas about, but none of them were doing anything to disguise their scent and even in the sweaty, deodoranted and perfumed mass of dancing bodies, they were easy to avoid and unlikely to be able to pinpoint Carry's location.

He settled on a tall, broad shouldered figured --a guy big enough to play defence but, on closer inspection, not muscled enough for a professional-- and didn’t wait around: he walked up the group and, hooking his index finger on the man’s belt, pulled sharply enough to get his attention. The stranger’s eyes were green and wide when he turned to find Carry leaning in close. Not bad, lips a little thin and face a little common, but his eyes were pretty and he looked impressed enough to fan Carry’s ego. Carry smiled, knowing perfectly well what he looked like: about two heads shorter and deceptively slight under his loose shirt despite the marked musculature the green t-shirt revealed underneath.

“Drink?” he offered with a gesture --it was too loud for speech-- and the question was answered before it was asked.

He never got to buy it, though, because less than ten minutes later he was shoved against a half-covered nook and getting his tonsils thoroughly examined. And it was good. Completely different from heat, he didn't feel almost sick with need, instead he felt slightly awkward at being pressed against a complete stranger so intimately and, at the same time, thrilled by it. This was what people were talking about when they spoke of sex, the slow build up that made him want to thrust till he came. He didn't feel any need to be fucked. No, what he wanted was to get _sucked_ , he decided impulsively, and his new companion was happy to accommodate, the bulk of his shoulders blocking Carry's lower half from view completely –or at least enough that nobody came to complain. Or maybe they weren't complaining because they were watching instead. The idea that he could do this in public, that he could risk being _seen_ and nobody would condemn him for it, that nobody would _care_... It was almost as liberating as choosing to have sex for its own sake, on a whim instead of because of an insatiable urge. He couldn't hear a thing over the pounding of the music in the background and when the beta pulled his cock out, he found he had to turn his head aside to stop himself from coming, suddenly the image of someone on their knees at his feet hitting him hard and low, making him burn with it.

It was crazy, it was nothing like what an omega was supposed to want, and for all that he hated the social conventions around it, Carry's physical urges had always fit the omega biology perfectly well. Except he was not in heat now and it seemed... He tightened the fingers he'd buried in the beta's thick dark hair and was sucked harder for his trouble, which made him thrust into the wet, slick heat of the man's throat hard enough he whimpered an apology. Instead of pulling away, though, lust-darkened eyes, all pupil, met his own. And then there were hands on his arse pushing him forward hard. Carry gasped, toes clenching in an effort to hold back, but the message was clear: the beta didn't want him to. He wanted Carry to fuck his mouth with all he had.

So he did, pushed in and out fast and hard, keeping an eye on the man's face at first but then clenching his eyes shut and his hands on the man's hair as he took everything he wanted with absolute abandon, no control, and no pretence. The rhythm wasn’t dissimilar to fucking, but being on the other side, giving instead of demanding…

He came long and deep for what felt like a long time, and felt the muscles of the beta's throat swallowing around him, tight but silky. As soon as he managed to loosen his grip, there was a tongue licking him completely clean and making him shudder –too sensitive to be touched, still to turned on to pull away. The man tucked him in, and Carry dragged him into a toilet stall to return the favour with a handjob with a lot of heavy kissing. It was almost strange to see to someone's pleasure when he wasn't turned on himself, but he liked the kissing, and he definitely liked the rush of stopping to readjust his wrist and having his partner beg him for it.


	23. Chapter 23

**&**

**Keenan**

The redhead in the corner kept glancing their way but Keenan wasn’t sure it was him she was looking at till their eyes met across the room and she licked her lips without looking away. After that, it was just a matter of smiling back and accepting her offer of a drink. They ended up making out in a shaded corner of the room and then she took him home and made him fuck her brains out on her sofa, not even able to wait long enough to get to the bedroom. It was hot, she was beautiful and her arse was a marvel he suspected came from dedicated training. He almost commented on it, but he didn’t know her and some people liked to pretend their bodies were natural instead of admitting to the effort they put into making themselves beautiful.

They'd had a second go at it in the actual bed and Keenan had gotten to take off her bra and hold her breasts in his hands as he fucked into her tight, warm pussy. His favourite position, and the hair pulling hadn't hurt, either. But it been nothing to write home about, and neither were the next two women he slept with. It got him wondering about men, but he still hadn’t met any he was attracted to. He could see features he appreciated as aesthetically pleasing and that was about it and maybe.... It was just that he couldn’t quite forget what heat sex had been like, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Johnson’s non-heat sex life was as… mild. Of course, Johnson could have sex with alphas all he wanted.

And so could he, Keenan realised, feeling a bit idiotic. Johnson was the only omega he’d met he was perfectly compatible with, sure, but there were plenty of others, plenty of _women_. And if Johnson was happy to have sex without attachments, why shouldn’t some of them feel that way too? Hell, he could even _date_. He didn’t think even very independent omegas were okay with a bondmate going off on week-long road trips, but maybe dating could be okay. If there were whole agencies dedicated to providing unbonded omegas with willing alphas, there surely were a number of them in need who would be happy for a boyfriend instead as long as that boyfriend was happy not to bond for a while.

The revelation felt almost magical and for a few days the idea alone sustained him through his jerk-off sessions. Then he realised he had no idea of how to meet an omega like that.

 

&

 

In the end, he'd met Amalia the way he met most people he didn't work with: at a family party. Keenan's family was lively, to put it nicely, and 'the kind of family that made neighbours call in reports for excessive noise, to be perfectly factual. Keenan didn't mind, except for those times when the police showed up and they all had to apologize profusely and promise they'd do the communal cleaning for the whole street as compensation.

Keenan's sister had invited Amalia to the latest shindig even though it was Aunt Mira and not their mum hosting it. To them, it was almost the same, when they were children and their dad had been off having some operation or their mum was having a downer, they had often spent months living at their aunt's. There was no real blood relationship since Keenan's mum was adopted, but the sisters were so close as adults and so alike in their mannerisms that most people who discovered the fact refused to believe it. Keenan and Tzeera hardly had reason not to, they were happy to have a second home when their parents' place went into crisis mode. Keenan's dad had had a spinal cord injury as a child and used a wheelchair, he could do most things but, as he put it, there were some kinks in the system. And his mum, well, her kinks were mostly in her mind, but when she hit a snag, it was also much harder to figure out how to fix it.

It was a testament to his parents charisma that they could both disappear from society for prolonged periods of time and their friends would not just welcome them back but offer any assistance they could. Their problems would never go away, but neither did the people that had their backs', especially not each other. It almost seemed worth it to Keenan, even as a child he'd dreamed of having that for himself, a person that would never want to go away. Betas always scoffed at how magical a bond between an alpha and an omega could truly be, they insisted the studies that children born of bonded couples were happier overall were biased, or badly done, or just bullshit. But Keenan didn't need scientific proof to believe it; he'd seen it almost every day growing up.

And then he'd seen Amalia there among his family, chocolate skin a little darker than most people's in the room and eyes luminous as she looked around the room with some alarm. Keenan could see her point, after a long break from his family, the noise levels normal conversation reached were also a little startling to him. He knew she was an omega even across the crowded room, the air was heavy with her scent of exotic flowers. Cardamom, he thought, and it only made sense that his brain was trying to tell him that this woman was like family by insisting she smelt of homemade cooking. He couldn't really approach her directly –it'd have been okay in a bar as long as he'd kept his physical distance, but this was a family space--, but his sister hadn't been cruel enough to abandon her in the melee and Keenan had barely had a chance to see her lately. She turned to hug him back, holding on tight for a moment. She'd been away at uni in Toulouse for a while and this year Keenan had only been in the area once so far.

She turned to her friend and pointed at Keenan with so much superiority it seemed almost a dismissal, but she was still smiling. “This is my brother, Keenan, big hockey star.” The girl smiled, first at Tzeera's theatrics, then at Keenan himself.

“Nice to meet you,” she offered a hand, which was the right way around alpha-omega protocol, of course. The way she was dressed screamed professional and in that context omegas had taken to handshaking and casualness to fight back the assumptions that they should have been homemaking instead. Keenan shook it as she said her own name, “Amalia Collier.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Keenan assured her, smiling back, in the brief instant of contact he'd felt his nose hadn't deceived him: they were compatible, to an extent, at least. The way she smiled back looking him straight in the eye meant she hadn't missed it, and she definitely didn’t look displeased about it.

 

&

 

He'd been hopeful but he hadn't expected anything as extreme as finding himself seriously dating Amalia just a couple weeks later. But she was not the kind of person to wait around to be asked. She was a lawyer in the firm Tzeera was doing an internship and she'd decided to transfer from the Toulouse office to see a little of the world, although she freely admitted she worked such long hours it would most likely be the world from her office window. Keenan could definitely sympathize with that kind of dedication and the demands it put on your personal life and almost before he knew it they had hit it off talking about how other people just didn't get it and kept getting mad at them for not being available.

After their second date, she'd leaned close outside her door and kissed him. He'd kissed her back immediately, none of the hesitation he knew he'd have felt mere months earlier. If nothing else, Johnson had taught him to seize the moment. Before he knew it they were making out passionately, her small breasts pressed against his chest and her hands pulling at his collar to bring him closer. She'd pulled back panting a little and watching him with new eyes.

“Good,” she'd declared. “Thought we'd get that out of the way.”

Keenan had laughed. “Anytime, counsellor.”

She'd rolled her dark eyes at him, but he could tell she liked it. She was a hard-worker, like him, and she liked to talk about work even when she left. Keenan didn't mind, so did he and if she was willing to listen to him talk about scrimmages, he could bloody well sit down and ask questions about why her cases worked the way they did.

Keenan had rarely met someone who got him so fast, even his sister, with whom he was really close, always made time to see her friends, even if only for half an hour chat after a test or before work. Outside of work, Keenan made time for his family –it wasn't exactly a hardship but he did it at least equal measure at their insistence and his interest. Most of the time, he wanted to be playing or planning plays; he didn't need a hobby or crave one and he had no friends outside of his team except the ones he'd kept from childhood.

Amalia had mentored Tzeera during her internship in a law firm back in Toulouse and when she'd decided to transfer to Tzeera's own hometown to get a different type of experience and see the world, his sister had returned the favour. Of course, Tzeera was deeply and vehemently amused that she'd introduced Keenan to his girlfriend and would not miss a chance of reminding him of his 'debt', but a little siblingly teasing wasn't a bad deal, all things considered.

Sex with Amalia wasn't heat sex, but it was definitely better than any of his one-night stands. Part of it was that Keenan cared about her and --as much of a reputation as he'd had when he was younger--, he preferred to be with someone he liked both in bed and outside it –another reason trying to date Johnson had been a terrible idea. And part of it was that she was an omega and they were compatible, she'd produced a condom the first time they'd fucked and Keenan had hesitated long enough that she'd sighed and explained. “I have a chip, too.”

“Oh, okay, sure, I mean...”

She'd raised a hand and covered his lips, shaking her head. “You have a right to know.”

He'd nodded, her fingers still keeping him from speech and when she'd lingered, he'd licked her. This had set her off laughing hard enough that the sex had been slightly delayed in favour of a tickling fight, but he couldn't say he minded a little sweaty wrestling for foreplay.

She'd said he had a right to know about contraceptives, which he could see how he would. But he didn't ask about heat even though it'd affect him too if he was around when it happened. And what would happen if he _wasn't_? Did the fact that Amalia had sex with alphas –and he was under no illusions that he was her first-- mean that she had sex with alphas during heat? Or was it only heat sex that made subsequent heats more intense? He'd tried to read up on it back when he'd been trying to help Johnson, but there seemed to be as many theories as omegas and very little that was generally proven true.

He could wait for her to tell him. He could trust her to tell him, and who knew? Maybe he wouldn't be around, or hell, she could be one of those omegas who didn't have heats. Female omegas could even have kids without them so many argued their heats were an evolutionary remnant, like appendixes, from times when infant mortality would have demanded each capable omega to have as many kids as they could manage if they were to pass on their genes.

 


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the lovely comments and the patience, too. I think I've cracked where the plot is going and I've finished revising that other story that was bugging me so I hope some more soon :)

**&**  

**Cartwright**  

Sex with betas was better than no sex, but it a bit like eating a meal without enough salt. It did the job of satisfying his hunger but that was about all that could be said for it. But it did the job, and hadn’t Carry wished for a life with no heats for as long as he could remember? So what if life off the ice felt a little… lacklustre? Life didn’t need to exciting all the time, life or death, hair-pulling desperation and risking it all. That was what hockey was for: a game where he could put all his need for excitement and adventure into practice with skills he’d honed with years of practice and where the worst he could get was a concussion. And it was beautiful, too, something beautiful Carry could made that had nothing to do with what he was _made_ to be. Something that was all his own choice, his own hard work and his own credit. He didn’t care what reporters said, Carry’s hormones weren’t scoring for him and anybody who mattered knew it too. 

And on the ice, Avali was a fine partner to have and there was no reason Carry shouldn’t relish his presence and his skill. It was fine to admire his passes and his form when he was skating, when _they_ were making things happen. When they were winning together. He could even admit it’d be particularly satisfactory to defeat the Titans with Avali at his side, an alpha who had sided with him for once, who had his back a 100% and would not abuse that.  

He missed the sex, and the intimacy of the bond being there when they spoke off the ice, but what they were capable of together without any hormones to help was almost better. Carry and Avali had forged a partnership, if not quite a friendship, based on their mutual love for the game, and sleeping together hadn’t made that connection for them, and it hadn’t been able to destroy it either.  

They had two games ahead of them, if they won one, they’d be in the finals. The first team they were up against were the Cascades and they were coming to play the Flames on home ice. The way Avali, Thomas and he had been playing it seemed more than a done deal. But in the next two days Thomas got a bad head cold –not bad enough to stop him from playing but bad enough to slow him down considerably-- and then, the day of the game itself, he took a turn for the worst. 

“He’s got pneumonia,” Coach said with a heavy sigh. 

“What?” Carry almost snapped. “No way, he was _fine_.” 

Keenan sat next to him on the bench instead of Thomas so nobody was putting a hand on his arm to calm him down and Carry felt he was going to vibrate out of his own skin with anger. _How could he have missed this?_ They worked side-by-side every day! 

“He looked a little worn out to me, only,” Sven piped up from next to coach. “But obviously it was more serious than we thought.” 

“Is he in the hospital?” Santiago asked. They all sounded deflated, like they’d lost the crazy energy they’d been riding for the last month. 

“Yeah,” Coach answered. “He’s stable, it’s nothing huge. But he’s not here.” He look towards Avali and Carry, “I want you to go out with Santiago for a bit and try it out. We’ll just have to make do today.” 

They didn’t make do. It wasn’t so much that Santiago didn’t know about the bond, which forced them to slow down and spell things out for him considerably more than with Thomas, but that it felt utterly wrong. All their moves were planned for a faster skater with a shorter reach and they didn’t really know how to use Santiago’s own skills beyond the very basics anybody learned from playing in the same team. Patel’s line, also with Santiago, went out first, and scored once before they were switched. But pretty much the moment Avali and Carry hit the ice, things fell apart. They were wide open to each other, desperate to make up for their missing right-winger, but instead of helping them, it made them hyperaware of each other to the exclusion of other players and five minutes in Carry crashed into a defender and went flying.  

He hadn’t hurt himself, but it contributed to the feeling of wrongness, of being unable to make things coalesce. The Cascades] saw the opening and went for it and thirty seconds later the goal was lightning up purple, once again behind them.  

Carry hadn’t given up, not then and not when the Cascades] scored twice in rapid succession –one time getting around Carry himself, the other tricking Avali with a move that Thomas would have been ready to catch on his right had he been there. But maybe it’d have been better if he had, less painful, at least, to admit it was over instead of letting every second drag forward while clutching at the dying hope of victory. Sometimes, after it was over and done with, he wished he could do it. 

After such a terrible game, 3-1 and with a collection of minor scrapes as a cherry to the bitter cake, most of the team wanted to get drunk or high, but Carry gave Avali a look to come over to his own side of the room. "We should go see Thomas, he must be bored stiff by now." 

Avali had smiled a little wearily but agreed readily enough, it was only early afternoon and they stopped by to get Thomas some Chai tea and candy in case he was sick of hospital food. 

He was in a normal ward, supervised but not forbidden from visitors, and he looked pretty terrible: dark circles under his eyes and skin blotchy and a little sweaty despite the perfectly pleasant temperature of the room. He also seemed surprised as hell. "Guys! I'm so sorry!" He said as soon as he spotted them. 

Carry glanced at Avali to check if he knew what he was talking about, but Avali looked equally mystified. "What for?" He asked Thomas. 

"Um, for missing the game?" Thomas asked, but he had to swallow mid-sentence. He didn't seem to notice that if he had trouble breathing, playing a highly physical game of hockey was probably out of the question. 

"Dude," Avali said. "You. Are. Sick." 

"I know, but still." 

Avali opened his mouth, probably to keep arguing, but Carry didn’t want to go down that road, he stepped forward. "Here, we brought you some Chai." He turned to Avali, "Give him the candy." 

That distracted Thomas plenty. "Candy?" He asked hopefully, like he was really a kid and couldn't buy all the candy he liked. 

Avali laughed and said as much and Thomas chuckled, "But free candy tastes better!" He argued, then broke into a coughing fit. 

"Oh, that's... I think we better stop with all the exciting candy chat or you're going to end up in real trouble," Carry decided, then took a step back from where Thomas now lay half curled on the bed, panting like he'd run a marathon. "I'll leave the candy on your bedside table," he told him, itching to do something to help. Should they try and get a nurse? "It should be good for your throat if you don't bite it too much." 

Thomas tried to object and ended up having to have Avali help him drink some water. After that, he'd deflated and accepted the book from his table and started passing the pages idly: Carry wasn't sure if he was reading it or looking at some pictures on it, but in any case it'd keep him busy and let his lungs rest. 

"Bye, T," Avali called before turning to go for the door. 

Carry had to run to catch up with him. "Wait!" He called and Avali slowed down and turned towards him.  

"Sorry, just hate the smell of these places," he explained with a grimace. "My parents get sick a lot." 

Carry blinked at him, confused by this suddenly intimate confession. "Yeah?" 

"Yeah, my dad uses a wheelchair, had an accident when he was a kid so that's..." He shrugged. "A bit of a problem." 

"Oh, so you never did the whole sports thing together?" 

"Play, you mean?" Avali asked, he looked anxious to get out so Carry hurried to catch up with him and let him set the pace –fast but not rushing—out of the ward and then down the stairs and through a fluorescent hallway till they hit the hospital foyer. "Not really, he likes swimming and quiet things like that." 

"What about your mum?" 

"She's... She's proud and everything, but it's not because it's hockey. She doesn’t get that, for her it's great because I'm succeeding and that means she can show off to her friends and sisters about it." 

Carry laughed. "And subtly imply she has the best kid of all?" He suggested. "My father does that with my sister, she's into beneficence and all that and everybody thinks she's beautiful." 

Avali's glance his way lingered a bit too long and for once Carry was only pretending he didn’t know what it meant. "They must be proud of you, too, right?" 

Carry shrugged. They had never said anything to indicate such a thing to him. "I guess so, I mean, the money I make is great so..." 

"No, I mean, you set out to do this and you got to the top of where a hockey player can get." 

"Is that what the Flames are now?" Carry joked, but Avali was having none of it, he'd slowed down and now he stopped, frowning. 

"Is this because of the trade?" He asked uncertainly, stealing glances at the hallway that led out. "Because lots of great players have a history of getting traded, it doesn't mean... I don't know, that you aren't good or whatever. You know that, right?" 

Carry tried to shrug it off. "Oh, I could win every game and every best player prize and it wouldn't make a difference to them: they just don't get it." 

They'd finally reached the front door and as it closed behind them, Avali sighed in relief. Carry thought he'd drop the subject, instead his teammate stopped and turned to face him for the first time since they'd left Thomas' room. "That sucks," he said gently, "but at least you got us now." 


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a longer one with Keenan angsting :p

**&**

**Keenan**

The restaurant they ended up in to talk strategy –Johnson's suggestion but Keenan's mind had been churning with ideas already—was too fancy for their purposes, but once the waiter took the candles away and brought up finger food to share it didn't much matter.

"Avali, you can't possibly think that'd work," Johnson huffed, pushing his shoulders back and fixing him with a scowl like it was some kind of fight.

"Look, call me Keenan," he told Johnson. "It's really weird that you don't, considering."

Johnson's eyes narrowed. "Because we..."

"Are linemates, yes," Keenan interrupted, he might not have been able to read Johnson's scent off the ice, but he sure as hell knew that stormy expression by now. It hadn't even occurred to him that Johnson would assume anything else. After all, what they'd done in the bedroom was nothing compared to what they managed on the ice, or the way they'd looked into each other's minds. To imagine that sex was more intimate than that... But he didn't know how to explain all that, not in a way Johnson would believe. "You call Thomas by his name, it's only fair."

"Lots of people call each other by their last names," Johnson insisted.

"Yes, and it's fine when it's friendly but... I don't know. You just call me Avali when you're angry, so I can't say I've got the best... feelings about it."

"Okay, whatever then, _Keenan,_ " Johnson replied, and rolled his eyes at him, but if he was clearly trying to prove that using a different name didn't change his feelings, he was failing. When he said 'Avali' he sounded irritated, now he was almost... amused.

"Thank you, Cartwright," Keenan replied, and his left-winger's expression went sour.

"Carry," he corrected automatically and a moment later Keenan saw him freeze, realising that he'd just invited Keenan to call him by his given name. For a second, Keenan thought he'd take it back, but then _Carry_ 's shoulders relaxed and he gave a little nod. "Now, we should do _this_ instead," he said, pushing the notebook in which they'd been sketching plays towards Keenan.

&

Two days later, Thomas got out of the hospital, but he was still on mandatory medical leave for about a week. He _might_ make it to the next game, but he might also not and the one thing they knew for sure was that they couldn't afford to lose if they wanted to qualify for quarter finals. If Keenan was determined to drag them to victory and Sven was dedicated, _Carry_ was a whirlwind. He would not stop after practice until coach stood and watched them walk out of the ice and, more often than not, he'd convince Keenan to meet up and strategize with him. It got to the point where three days later, when the next match was a whole five days away –the long-awaited lull before the quarter final matches started—he once again wanted Keenan's attention. His face fell when Keenan interrupted his rant about the newest formation coach had them trying to explain, "Wait, wait, I can't today. Sven and I are going to watch the Fallings last season and make notes of their weaknesses."

"Oh, okay, then..." He seemed a bit at a loss.

"You could come," Sven said, showing up out of nowhere as far as Keenan could tell, and if the way Carry tensed up was any indication, he hadn't felt him approach either. Maybe he was finally relaxing around alphas.

Carry hesitated and Keenan could almost see him thinking it over, weighting the pros and cons. He didn't seem overly fond of Sven –for no reason Keenan could see since their captain had been nothing but accommodating— but he obviously had no trouble spending time with Keenan anymore and he'd proven again and again he was willing to put up with some discomfort in the name of hockey. "You sure you don't mind?"

Sven smiled at him. "Do I mind if you want to put in extra hours?" He joked.

Carry shrugged. "I thought it might a be thing you to did, you know, captain and alternate."

"We do, but we can use another set of keen eyes and you are good at that, aren't you?" Sven was looking at Carry a little too closely and Carry was looking right back, surprised and wary instead of pleased at the compliment. Keenan noticed that he had no trouble staring _Sven_ down. And then it clicked: Carry was completely closed off, and Sven, unlike most of their teammates, could tell.

Keenan didn't think about it before drawing the other alpha's attention. "Oh, he does that, it's a bit odd, isn't it?"

They both turned to him, but for once it wasn't Carry who held Keenan's attention. Sven was frowning at him. "And so do you," he commented, close to neutral but not quite.

And of course he'd noticed, it wasn't something Keenan normally did when they were alone. It wasn't fair, for one, and he appreciated the chance to let go of his newly constructed psychic walls, for another. Fair being the key word. "Yeah, well, it's only fair. I like a little privacy, too."

"Privacy?" Sven repeated. "Do you want to wear a mask so people can't see your face too?"

"Look," Carry interrupted, "can we just watch tape?"

Sven turned to him, hesitating for a moment. Carry had just broken protocol by interrupting two alphas and Keenan was pretty sure he hadn't even noticed. Of course not, he interrupted Keenan all the time and Keenan had never called him on it. Knowing Carry, he might have _decided_ he wouldn’t notice because it wasn’t fair and had just carried on like that, any alphas who had a problem with it could try and call him on it. Except most alphas didn’t go around demanding omegas act submissive, they just expected it. They’d think Carry was rude, or an idiot, not a revolutionary.

After a pause, Sven nodded. "Sure thing, lead the way, Keenan. I got good snacks in the conference room."

&

At first, Keenan thought it'd be fine. After all, Sven was a laidback kind of guy and Carry, once he relaxed, could even be fun.

But he'd forgotten how unnerving it could be to be around someone who'd intentionally hid his scent. Sven kept glancing at Carry when he spoke like he'd forgotten he was there and after a few times, Carry lost his patience. "What is it?"

Sven didn’t beat around the bush "I don't know why you are doing it, or even how, but it's disturbing."

"It's also none of your business," Carry replied, voice even but implacable. And rude, Keenan reminded himself, it was really damned rude if you didn’t know Carry didn’t _mean_ to be. Or maybe it was rude anyway, but Keenan knew enough of what Carry put up with himself to be able to overlook it.

Sven gapped. "What?"

And Keenan had to intercede. "Wait," he said, getting up so his body was between them, blocking their sight of each other. "Sven, let me explain."

"You don't have an obligation to project your feelings for anybody to pick up," Carry interrupted from his other side, and Keenan turned to give him a look.

He might have let Carry break protocol right, left and centre, but where did he get off trying to decide what Keenan could and couldn't do? Wasn't he the one that thought ordering others around was wrong? He tried to keep his voice level, "No, but I have a right to explain when my best friend asks, don't I?"

Carry's expression froze and Keenan knew exactly what he would have smelt like if he hadn't been hiding his scent.  "Yes, you do," he said tightly, then shot Sven a look. "Thanks for the tips, captain." And walked out so fast Keenan was tempted to check his feet for skates.

Sven waited a few moments after the door had clicked shut. "Can you stop doing it now? I'm not kidding, it freaks me out."

Keenan took in a deep breath, closed his eyes and exhaled as the door to his mind swung open. Sven recoiled and sat back down heavily. "Hades, Keenan, what's wrong?"

"I've been doing it a lot, I feel kinda... exposed." He shrugged. "But it's fine. It's only fair."

"Fair?" Sven repeated.

"Because you are open," Keenan explained.

"But why were you doing it in the first place? You said it was fair before, too."

"Carry does it, so he taught me to even the playing field, so to speak."

"Ok, that makes sense, but why is Carry doing it?"

"Well, it's... you know we were kind using it, right?"

"You were more than just kinda using it, except then you stopped and I thought: sure, you are right you can't rely on it. It was just the one game you messed up, anyway," he added, tone softening. Keenan flinched, even though Sven had offered his forgiveness back then already.

"But you're doing it off the ice, too? That's not healthy, Keenan, there's been studies with soldiers who did it for long periods of time and let me tell you, psychotherapy was the least of their problems."

"Off the ice is when we need it more, don't you get it? If we don't, he'll..."

"Go into heat?" Sven said.

"Yes!"

"So what about not spending every free moment hanging out with him, Keenan? Or is that too reasonable for your melodramatic back and forth?"

“And then how are we supposed to learn to play without the bond?” Keenan asked, very reasonably if he did say so himself, “you know can't really practice that with the whole team watching."

"Keenan." Sven reached out and took hold of his forearm on the table. "You sit with him every time we all go out, and you were looking at him almost every minute he just spent in this room."

"Because he's all closed up! How else I'm supposed to know what he's feeling?"

Sven’s grip tightened almost angrily. "You're not supposed to _care_ what he's feeling every second, especially not when we are watching tape!"

"You were looking at him, too," Keenan accused, because he hadn’t been able to ignore it, but it was true. So true, in fact, that _Carry_ had been unable to ignore it. If Sven had kept his eyes on the screen like he claimed Keenan should do…

"I was looking at you both,” Sven explained, “it was like sitting here with two ghosts, I could feel you were here but there was nothing... like you were dead inside. It was creepy."

"Well, I think it's peaceful," he said, crossing his arms to get Sven to stop touching him.

Sven shot him an incredulous look, leaning back on his chair as if to open up the space between them. "So you don't want Johnson, sorry, _Carry_ to open up again?"

Keenan froze, unable to control the rush of longing that sent through him. That was bad enough, but when he saw Sven's expression, he immediately clammed up again, his inner door slamming shut.

Too late. His friend stared, then sighed, shoulders loosening from confrontational into protectiveness. "Fuck, you are in..."

"No!" Keenan snapped. He couldn't hear it. And it wasn’t like that, anyway, not the way Sven was assuming. "I've... I've got to go. It's my auntie's birthday tonight, I'm picking up Amalia in half an hour."

 

&

 

Keenan wasn't as close to aunt Savitri as he was to his aunt Mira, but that wasn't really saying much –Mira had played mother as much as his own mother had, after all—so he was perfectly comfortable bringing his fairly new girlfriend along to the party. He knew Amalia found the big gatherings a little intimidating; she was used to crowded rooms, but only when she was dressed up to the nines and meant to impress with her witty remarks and social savoir faire. Not that he'd tried to talk her out of her choice of a ruffled white blouse, tailored trousers and high shoes. It obviously made her feel good about herself, and it definitely made her _look_ it, the creamy colours made her dark skin glow and the heels had his eyes dropping a little further south than they probably should have at a family gathering.

She waited till there was appropriate lull to bring aunt Savitri the beautiful scarf she'd helped Keenan choose for his aunt. He'd had to model it himself for Amalia to decide on the precise tone that would work with his aunt's skin, and she'd liked it so much, she'd got him one too –which of course she'd insisted he shouldn't wear to his aunt's party because she didn't believe him his aunt would get a kick out of it. After Savitri had thanked them both and modelled the scarf on top of her sari even though the colours kind of clashed, Keenan gave her a once over and commented, "I got one too, but I'm only going out wearing it with you if you wear the plum red sari."

 

Savitri laughed. "You think I want to go out wearing the same thing as my handsome young nephew? What am I? An idiot?"

 

Amalia laughed at thim for that one, more relaxed that he’d ever seen her in public and Keenan rolled his eyes at her half-heartedly, glowing inside. Keenan took a second to shoot Amalia a smug look and she rolled her eyes at him in turn.

And even though the party lasted late into the night, as was usual when his family gathered for any reason and regardless of job obligations, she paid him back in full for doubting her when he took her home, dragging him inside and making him sit still while she fucked herself on his cock soft and leisurely, building up her rhythm so painstakingly slowly Keenan was almost crying by the time she told him he could move.

 

&

Keenan came in with an apology on the tip of his tongue. He'd promised to be home on time and then Thomas had come up with a new play and it had gone straight out of his head. He hadn't even _texted_. Amalia wasn't in the living room and, for a moment, he thought she might not even be at his place anymore. Then he saw her shoes, discarded messily next to the kitchen stools. There was a glass of wine there, and a half drank bottle. And the rests of dinner; her plate empty, the matching one covered for him. He went over and discovered the salmon had congealed a little and the potatoes looked sad, but it was homemade. Damn, he thought, one time she took the time to actually cook and he'd missed it. He wanted to go see if she was there, but he was also absolutely starving because he'd been going through maneuvers for hours and he'd come straight home, skipping the post practice dinner Carry and Thomas had gone off to.

In the end, he took the plate and a fork and went back to his bedroom without heating it up, a sort of karmic apology since he couldn't say it to her. She was on the bed, already sleep, he knew because she was twisted up in the sheets like she'd been tossing and turning. He ate the food without tasting it, just letting her scent fill his brain, her sight brand his mind. When his body was sated, he dropped the plate off in the sink. He'd made the effort of showering in the rink so he could drop his clothes and join Amalia in the bed as soon as he got home.

It was a little foolish, but deep down he’d been hoping she’d be there.

Even though they'd only been actually sleeping together for a month or so, she instinctively turned into his body, seeking warmth, and woke a little when he curled up around her. Not enough to speak anything more than a mumbled version of his name, but enough for Keenan to feel welcome. And guilty as hell. This person on his bed was absolutely perfect for him, of course she, of all people, had understood when work had run over –she'd even got that he'd forgot to text her about it.

He leaned on his elbow, watching her upturned nose, her dark eyelashes, the soft curve of her chin. Then he traced the outline of her arm with his fingers, too soft, apparently, because she squirmed like it tickled, so Keenan let himself really touch her. He went slow, thinking through every bump among the soft silkiness of her, every imperfection that only brought out the beauty of the rest.

For the first time in his life Keenan knew he was on the right path, he could see Amalia's and his future ahead of them: a bonding sometime in the future, then kids –biological if that's what Amalia wanted--, then retiring and staying home with them –going stir crazy if it was too early in his career, and maybe going stir crazy anyway. And then her patience with him, not pitying but full of that unrelenting perseverance that he’d bet made her invincible in court. And then he'd get over himself, over the slump hockey players went through just after retiring, and he'd try his hand at something new, maybe go to university, maybe try a business –not that they'd need the money because he was already well-off and his investments would only make him richer as he grew older and he already knew Amalia would not hear of leaving her own career. They'd probably end up one of those ridiculous people with private cars and more than one property.

He just needed to work harder for it: he could have hockey and he could have her. Sven had proved it was possible, and so had plenty of other busy alphas and omegas in the world. He’d make it up to her, and then he’d prove he could be worth waiting for.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Think you might like this one ;p

&

**Cartwright**

The Lynxes were just another team in the league to the Hell Flames, but they had been important to the Titans. They were both medium league teams in the same division that kept swapping rankings and to make matters worse had stadiums in close proximity to each other. And to Carry, they were the team that had caused him his first major injury on the ice. He was almost sure it'd been an accident –although the way the Lynxes and the Titans played each other was anything but mild-- but he'd been out for three games afterwards, going stir crazy at home and getting paranoid about whether the Titans would realise how vulnerable someone Carry's size was on the ice and decide to trade him.

So it would not have been an exaggeration to suggest Carry was in an excellent mood after winning a game against them, even if it had only been 2-1 and the winning goal had been Keenan's. It'd been such a good game that the reporter doing the post-game interview for Channel 1 had yet to bring up Carry's omega status or suggest in any way that the expectations for him and other players were different.

And they could have just as easily missed her, except that in the middle of a question about blocking, Keenan's eyes went wide and alert and the reporter turned to look. There was a woman on the stands, dark skin and a yellow sundress, and she was waving at Keenan. Not madly like a fan but almost coyly; she didn't need to work for Keenan's attention because she already had it. Carry's next breath got stuck in his throat. He had known Keenan wasn't his, but it took seeing the beautiful woman smiling at his linemate for him to realise that it didn't mean Keenan wasn't going to be someone else's. Why should a healthy young alpha not indulge, after all? Worst of all, the interviewer was an alpha too and that meant Keenan was pretty much wide open, projecting his possessive pleasure all over them both.

The reporter whistled. "That's one pretty lady you got there, Avali. That your girlfriend?"

Keenan tore his gaze away from the stands to look at the other man, still smiling a little and looking strangely shy. "Well, yes. New thing and all, but..." He raised his hands, two fingers twisted up to shape the forever symbol.

The reporter returned the smile for a moment but then his face clouded, and he glanced back at the stands where the woman was talking to her companion, another woman of lighter complexion that Carry deduced was related to Keenan by her beautiful almond-shaped eyes. He knew he had a younger sister and about a dozen cousins, but they'd never come to a game before that Carry knew of. "Isn't she...?" The reporter asked, eyes stuck on Keenan’s girlfriend. Carry had known about her, he couldn’t not, he had a nose and he spent what seemed like most of his waking hours around Avali, but it was different seeing her. He couldn’t have guessed she was an omega from this far, though, but something about the way she shook her head at her friend must have confirmed it for the alpha reporter because he finished with a statement, "she's an omega."

Carry wasn’t surprised, why should he be surprised? Plenty of omegas dated alphas, after all. He was just surprised she was willing to be so open about it.

"Yes," Keenan agreed, trying for neutral but muting his scent in a way that spoke of wariness to Carry.

"Oh, I see, so you're planning to settle down soon!" The alpha exclaimed, "Is she happy to move around with you?"

"Oh, we're not getting bonded for now. We're just dating."

"Just dating?" The reporter repeated uncomprehendingly, "but she's an omega and you are an alpha."

"Yes," Keenan said a little more tensely, "and we're getting to know each other, just like betas."

"Is that so?” the man asked and to Carry’s surprise, he muted his own scent. Not enough, though, he wasn’t skilled at it, just an amateur with basic school training. Carry and Keenan both could read his distaste. “That's... modern,” he commented, looking away from the woman in the stands. “Is that not a problem for your families?"

"Our families?” Keenan repeated, visibly angry even though he’d closed his mind with a slam that had Carry cringing. “We are responsible both adults, there is no need to ask for permission. But, actually, that's my sister over there with her. My family love Amalia."

The reporter’s eyes widened and Carry felt his curiosity loud and clear. He shot to his feet, half stepping in front of Avali. “We need to go shower,” he announced, too loud, and hit Avali on the shoulder rather hard to get his attention. Avali hesitated, but then got to his feet to follow.

The reporter wasn’t done, though. “What about her family, Avali? What do they think of you ‘dating’ their omega daughter?”

Carry felt Avali freeze behind him and hesitated, but he’d wasted his chance to distract his teammate. He turned to look, helpless, and saw Avali facing the reporter, still closed up but probably only because he couldn’t concentrate enough to drop his shields. “This is a hockey game, and I’m a hockey player and that is _all_ that should concern you regarding me. My personal life is just that, personal, and the people in it have nothing to do with my public profession.” Carry breathed out, but Keenan didn’t stop. “And there is no reason an adult, whatever their orientantion, should be constrained in their personal lives by the prejudices of a small-minded majority.”

He managed not to flinch, not that anybody was looking at him. He was pretty sure every reporter at the game was staring at Avali as he turned and walked past Carry towards the changing rooms.

&

He was still thinking about approaching Keenan after they got dressed, of explaining to him in small words what he’d done, but their captain got there first. Carry looked away, still feeling slightly uncomfortable around the other alpha. He’d apologized for his outburst the other day, even offered an explanation for his shielding. It was just common courtesy when Sven was wide open at all times and their captain was a reasonable guy, he’d accepted Carry’s clumsy apology without making him sweat for it.

He didn’t look reasonable now, but he was still wide open. Carry forced himself not to move from his seat but he couldn’t keep his eyes from dropping to the ground, as submissive to the angry alpha stalking into the room as he could manage. He breathed through it, ignoring the not-so-hushed confrontation between Keenan and Sven, and when he looked up, Santiago was watching him worriedly. “You okay?”

Carry shrugged. “Alphas,” he said simply, hoping that was enough.

Santiago glanced towards the door, nodding. “Yeah, man, I could feel them sparkle from here. Sounds like a right headache for you.”

He didn’t know how right he was, because Carry hadn’t been invited to the meeting in which Keenan was going to get ripped a new one for suddenly declaring himself a radical liberal in favour of omega rights, but the media wasn’t going to ignore Keenan’s omega linemate when they pursued the story.

He could lie, or he could speak up, but he’d just lost the safe haven of being ignored. Carry had spent his whole career fighting to be considered just a player on the ice, no orientation, and Keenan had just swept that choice away from him like it was a puck on fire.

He should have been furious. But… he felt _relieved_. It was insane, but his first thought when he’d understood what it meant for him was that he wouldn’t be able to keep pretending. Not pretending he was just a normal player, that was real, but pretending that it was working.

That it had ever worked.

Because that was the truth of it, it hadn’t been a very good choice because it had never really worked. He’d never been judged on his own terms and for his own accomplishments and failures on the ice, not even by his team. It was what he’d wanted most, to play hockey freely, but he’d never had it. He’d spent the last two years –no, the last decade-- pretending that if he acted like he had the right to be here, like he forgot he was an omega and was expected to show submission towards alphas in a myriad of different ways, if he ignored the surprised and even angry looks he got for it, then he could make it. He’d forced the world around him to comfort to _his_ standards. But the world wouldn’t tamed: Sven would politely pretend not to notice and he thought Keenan genuinely did forget at times, but that wasn’t the real world. In the real world, it was okay for reporters to comment on Carry’s hormonal cycles –despite the fact that they had no real information about them—and for his mother to bring up the possibility of settling down all the damn time, and for everybody to keep expecting, after a lifetime proving the opposite, for him to give up on his dreams.

He’d faked it, but he couldn’t make it unless everybody else pretended as well, and it wasn’t enough to have a couple sympathetic alphas and a few more betas. Keenan was right. An idiot, but fundamentally correct in that pretending he could change his own existence by swimming against the tide alone was absurd. He had to somehow slow down the tide itself, impossible as it seemed, and make swimming a little easier for everybody involved.

He just hadn’t been brave enough to jump in alone. But what if he didn’t have to? The Titans had screwed him over, and Pucio hadn’t even seemed to care, but Keenan hadn’t done it for him. It was obvious as hell he’d got it bad for this Amalia lady, and since he wasn’t doing it for Carry, he wouldn’t stop for Carry either. He wouldn’t have to be more careful, it wouldn’t have to change their interactions. He wouldn’t owe him anything just because Keenan was incidentally also defending him.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realised I had nothing to read on the train, ended up writing 1k+ of this on my phone. Haven't even edited that bit, but I figure I should post the next part.

&

**Keenan**

By the time Sven and the coaches were done chewing him out, he had a text from his sister telling him she and Amalia had left. They weren’t far and Keenan made himself text back with the address of a sushi restaurant in the area, assuring Tzeera it’d be his treat, before he put the phone on silent.

He wanted to be held badly enough that he called a taxi to take him there instead of taking public transport. On a day like today, maybe he was too much of a celebrity for the bus anyway and he really couldn’t cope with getting punched by a disgruntled fan.

He hadn’t really expected a warmth welcome as he stepped in. Amalia wasn’t demonstrative in public, which he thought was more about her preference for understatement than about what she’d been taught regarding the role of omegas, but it had never crossed his mind that she might be upset. Not until he walked in and saw her ramrom straight posture had slipped. Tzeera got to her feet the moment she spotted him and walked past him with a warning look. He approached the table where his girlfriend sat hesitantly, and took the seat in front of her, taking in the empty wineglass by her side and her tired expression. “What’s wrong?”

She swallowed, eyes focused away from him. “Did you even consider asking me first?”

“Asking you first?” Keenan repeated, thoroughly lost.

Amalia turned to stare at him. “Whether I was okay being out as your girlfriend.”

“No,” he admitted with perfect honesty.

She exhaled, slow and measured. “You did not think I might care about the consequences of everybody knowing I’m dating an alpha?”

“I just… it’s the truth,” Keenan explained, “and it’s true it’s nobody’s business but ours.”

“It _is_ my parents’ business, Keenan,” she gritted out and he’d never seen her that angry before, “and you didn’t even give me time to warn them. It’s all over the media!”

“I’m sorry about that,” he offered, feeling like an idiot. Hadn’t Carry acused him of being unaware of what the world was like for omegas when they’d first met? He had thought he’d learned from that, that he was better now, that he was ready to… “It didn’t even cross my mind that your parents might not know,” he explained, then frowned. “How can they not know?”

He didn’t want to be hurt, but he was. He’d introduced her to his family as his girlfriend months ago, not that long after they’d first started sleeping together. He’d assumed she hadn’t had a chance to return the favour between his travelling and her own busy schedule, it had never crossed his mind that she might be keeping him a secret.

“Because I’m an omega, Keenan. An omega working abroad, all alone, and you are an alpha…”

“What are you talking about?” he interrupted, unable to let the conversation continue in this insane new direction. “It’s not like that, I’ve never… I haven’t made you feel like that, have I?”

Amalia paused, maybe for the first time closer to pain than anger. “No,” she replied, “ _you_ haven’t. But there’s all the rest of the world, too, Keenan. You can’t pretend it’s not real.”

 _But it isn’t real to me_ , he almost said. It was true, in its purest form. But he could see what she was saying: it was very real to her, the consequences of what they were doing weren’t something she could overlook. Carry’s pained face echoed in his brain. He’d been warned, he realized, and he’d missed it. “Fuck,” he whispered, more at the table than at her. “I should have known.”

Amalia didn’t say anything for a long moment. “It’s not just your fault, I liked to pretend, too. It’s nice when we’re alone, that you don’t… I like how you are with me, no bullshit.”

He raised his eyes to her. “Yes, but I should have been more careful, kept you safe from _their_ bullshit.”

Her lips pursed and he thought she was about to object, but this time she shook her head instead. “Yes,” she agreed, “you should have.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll… I don’t know. I’ll do whatever you want to make it better.”

“Would you apologize to people who believe in traditional relationships?” She asked and he felt like he’d been hit, breathless and frozen and Amalia’s face changed with understanding. “You won’t.”

“I… I didn’t say I was against traditional relationships,” he protested, weakly, not because he wasn’t sure but because he’d hurt her and he didn’t want to make it worse. “I said we were both responsible adults and didn’t need to ask for permission.”

She massaged her temple, her hair was already growing frizzy with her fiddling. “Keenan, this isn’t an interview you messed up. Or even a reporter who has it out for you. This is real news, the kind of thing they’ll ask you about all the time for the rest of your career.”

“And you think if I take it back, they won’t ask?”

“This isn’t my job, I just… I want to know you’re _willing_ to try.”

“Do you think I said something wrong? I mean, I get that you didn’t want people to know, and I should have asked and I shouldn’t have said anything about you without checking with you first. You are a hundred percent right about that. But other than your name… I didn’t say anything wrong. I don’t see what I can take back.”

“Not take back,” Amalia said slowly, “just… nuance. Explain. Your PR people will come up with something, I just…” She slumped forward, this proud, beautiful woman who held her head high at all times without seemingly any effort, and Keenan felt like his heart was breaking seeing what he’d done to her. “I haven’t talked to my mum yet, but…” Forget getting hit, this was more like being stabbed.

“Yes!” he assured her, and reached across the table for her hand. She let him take it. “I’ll listen to PR, I promise. And I can…” he squeezed, “I told you. Whatever you want.”

Amalia nodded slowly. “Okay, I’m going to pretend to get a text message now,” she explained, even as she jumped a little and looked down at her bag, then got her phone out, she continued in the same tone even as her brow furrowed in fake displeasure, “and that’s my boss, of course, and I forgot something at the office that we need right now.”

Keenan stared, still holding onto her hand and nodding along, hoping she’d either start making more sense or give him more precise directions. She got to her feet, patting his hand as she let go and then leaned in close to kiss his cheek, but her lips didn’t touch his skin, instead she whispered, “I’m gonna go home now, but Tzeera will stay to have dinner with you.”

He didn’t look around for whoever Amalia thought might be watching, just followed her lead. She was smiling when she straightened up and Keenan did what she was asking and returned the gesture. It was the least he could do.

&

Tzeera hadn’t been sympathetic, at all. Apparently to her it was obvious that a declaration of belief like the one he’d made would start up a shirtstorm in his professional and personal life both.

“Since when do you care about omega rights this much, anyway?” she demanded, cutting her salmon into small pieces.

“I’ve always cared. I just… I never noticed how shitty people were to them.”

“And now you got an omega girlfriend it’s all suddenly come to light?”

“Not really…” Keenan hedged, because now that Tzeera mentioned it, he didn’t think Amalia had ever mentioned how her life was hard because of the treatment of omegas. He’d proven willing to ignore all conventions and she’d expressed her approval but now that he thought about it, it had all been implicit. They’d never talked about it. No, the only omega who’d bitched about it to Keenan… Well, it wasn’t like he couldn’t learn empathy from his teammate, was it? Sven and Thomas had taught him plenty, too. “It’s been a series of things that made me notice, and back there with that reporter, it wasn’t the first time the press got on my case like that and… I couldn’t shut up about it anymore.”

Tzeera hummed as she chewed. Keenan’s stomach was in knots but his sister was happy to eat on his dime and he couldn’t really blame her; he’d promised her a fun afternoon with a friend and dinner, instead he’d created –with a lot of help from that arsehole from Channel 1—a situation that had made his girlfriend ran away from him and left his sister with the cleanup. “You mean those articles about you and Johnson, don’t you? I read a couple, they weren’t that bad, were they? Just celebrity gossip, really, since they had nothing to go on other than pictures of you guys playing. Hard to sell the romance when the winks are passes.”

Keenan snorted, offering a weak smile. “Yeah, well, it gets old anyway. And I’m… Carry said to forget it, that it was normal for him to get those kinds of articles. I called the team about it and tried to get them to make a fuss; they wouldn’t. They said the reporter had edged the line really carefully, hadn’t said anything overtly about us being together so it wasn’t… misinformation?”

“Yeah, that’s what lawyers are for, I’m afraid,” she explained apologetically. “Reporters get trained on how much they can say without getting sued.”

“Well, they are doing a great job,” Keenan said. “And Carry is so resigned to it, he just puts up with all of it. It’s… he’s angry, deep down, but it’s like he’s given up on getting treated like a goddamned person. I’ve never… how can that be okay?”

“Hey,” Tzeera pulled on his sleeve and waited for him to meet her eyes, “it isn’t okay. But it’s not yfdfour job to make the world safe for omegas, is it?”

“That’s what my coach said, that my job is to score,” Keenan admitted, “but it’s my team, he’s my teammate. I can’t… it doesn’t work if your team doesn’t have your back, it can’t.”

“You really care about him,” Tzeera said, sounding surprised. Keenan didn’t talk about his team much with his family, and Tzeera had been away for a while, busy with her own life now that she was older.

“He’s my teammate,” he repeated. He wasn’t sure who he was telling, but it _was_ the truth. He wasn’t doing this out of some fucked up alpha instincts, he cared about Carry because he was his teammate and a person and he had a right to be treated fairly. All omegas did, even the ones that weren’t tired or brave enough to say they wanted to be.

“Okay,” his sister said, sounding so grown-up all of sudden that Keenan had to look at her again, check it was really his little troublemaker of a sibling. “But do you need to get fired for it? That wouldn’t really help him. If you’ve got his back and if things are bad for omegas in hockey, then he can definitely use you there, can’t he?”

“You are too damn smart,” he complained, sighing, knowing already that he’d do what PR asked of him, that he’d stepped off his league and fumbled the whole thing trying to score without even knowing where the goal was.

“This can be good,” she explained, “they can’t make you retract it, flip around and you’ll look like a phony and there’s pretty much nothing worse. They’ll probably tell you this, but you can play it as a personal preference…”

&

“…and of course you’ve every right to defend _your_ lifestyle choices and it’s quite natural you’d get upset if some alpha questions how you treat your own omega,” the man finished with a winning smile.

Keenan would have been more impressed if his sister hadn’t outlined pretty much the same thing the previous day, but he nodded for him to go ahead. If he concentrated on being _practical_ he didn't even need to think about how strange it was to hear Amalia referred as 'his'. He'd promised her, and he knew what she would say, that even if she minded, it didn't matter what other people thought of them.

It should have been true. Except... what he really thought was that it shouldn't have mattered what other people thought of them, but it did, otherwise he wouldn't need to lie. Or not lie, but play these games so that he was toeing the line but not crossing it. He hadn't meant to come out in favour of omega rights, Tzeera was right, but backing down after speaking the truth left a sour taste in his mouth.

For once, it was a relief to walk into the changing room and find Carry's mind completely closed. Carry looked his way the moment he crossed the threshold, though, and there was something different on his face to the usual disapproval or irritation. For the first time, he remembered that Carry had tried to get him out of there when the questions had got too personal, and Keenan had tried to listen, to do the sensible thing. But... he hadn't, Carry wasn't the type to think intentions counted for anything. So why didn't he look angry? He'd never hid _that_ from Keenan. Carry looked back down to lace up his skates, he didn't need to, of course, he just wanted to look away from Keenan. But Keenan couldn't let it go. He found himself standing next to Carry's seat, the exact space he'd been avoiding all season. "I... Sorry I couldn't keep my mouth shut," he said, hesitantly. It was all wrong, but he was a pitiful liar and he _wasn't_ sorry, he couldn't get that alpha out of his head, thinking he could...

Carry looked up, and only then did Keenan realise that by standing so close he'd forced him to bare his neck. He took a step back automatically. "I didn't realise you were dating an activist," Carry said, only meeting Keenan's eyes for a moment before starting to stuff his clothes into his bag.

"What?" Keenan took another step, to the side this time because he didn't really want to have this conversation with the whole room. Thomas, next to Carry as usual, was wearing headphones, but he'd given them a couple looks –out of all of their teammates, he'd know how unusual it was for Keenan to come to Carry's side of the room.

"Well, what you said is hardly common opinion, is it? And not at all what you... well, it's a new perspective, it's all." Carry shrugged, he looked small down there, but Keenan knew well not to assume it meant he was really vulnerable, no matter how badly he wanted to protect him.

"It's true," Keenan replied, almost hurt by the implications, "I always... I didn't always understand what it was like for omegas, but I always thought everybody deserved the same chances. And it's true."

Carry pushed to his feet, ending up standing too close again, but this time, on skates, he didn't have to look up at Keenan at all. "Then why are you apologizing?" he asked, looking perfectly blank.

"It's just... wait, you don't think I should apologize?" He asked, hesitating. It'd be the first time Carry _didn't_ think Keenan had something to be sorry for, and of course it would be the one time everybody else did.

"Depends," Carry's ice blue eyes were neutral, his face giving nothing away, "do you think you did something wrong?"

"No," Keenan said, then thought better of it. "Well, the ideas were sound but... I mean, you tried to stop me. You knew it wasn't a good idea to say something like that to a reporter."

"It'll make things complicated," Carry admitted non-committedly, but he still didn't sound angry. Carry, who got furious if Keenan ignored his suggestions for plays on the ice, and who'd been angry with him for what seemed like an infinite number of reasons since they'd met. 

"And I also mentioned Amalia," Keenan remembered, "which I had no right to do at all."

"I see," Carry said, then picked up his bag from the bench, stepping around Keenan towards the lockers.

Keenan opened his mouth to respond, object somehow, then closed it again. What possible reason could he have to keep Carry there? He wasn't angry, not even annoyed and they'd definitely managed some great hockey even Carry was irritated at him before. He wanted to ask something, but he didn’t even know what.

 


	28. Chapter 28

&

**Cartwright**

Practice had gone well, and he had no real worries about the game the next day. But he couldn't stop thinking about Keenan. It was stupid, the man wasn't even sure he'd done the right thing by speaking out; why should Carry be impressed?

Carry had never said anything, or well, not to reporters, not anywhere it'd get published. He'd known he couldn't afford the hit to his already battered reputation, unlike Keenan. An alpha could do it by accident because the consequences would be negligible for them.

But no other alpha he'd known in the league had ever expressed any kind of support, not even in private. And, annoying as he found his linemate, he didn't really doubt his honesty. He might not have meant to say it out loud in front of a reporter, and it might have taken someone pushing him past his limits, but he _had_ done it. And he believed it.

Carry could still hear the words, something that could have almost been taken from a rally speech. The kind of thing they televised sometimes with a slight air of apology or amusement, as if wanting to change the world was a childish pursuit and telling the truth merely an inappropriate tendency age would cure you of.

They were right, of course, it was unrealistic, impractical. And it had nothing to do with hockey, so it wasn't Carry's problem. But he couldn't help but wonder... if Keenan followed through, if he insisted, what would happen? Would others speak up, too?

Maybe it was even more naïve to think that behind the oblivious facades there people like him. That behind the smiles and bland incomprehension simmered resentment and rage, always about to boil over. But he believed it. He had to. He was too alone not to dream of some support; however distant it was from anything that could truly change his own life.

 _He_ wasn’t about to do anything stupid, of course. No, Carry had learned the lesson with the Titans: the rules were different for him and he might be a much more valuable player to Flames but he wasn’t about to test how valuable.

He went back to the gym downstairs, set up the weights and closed his eyes, letting his muscles pull him away. Pushing his body until his mind had no choice but to give way.

“Are you okay?” came the question and it was lucky Carry had taken a minute to lay back and give his arms and lungs a break because he hadn’t heard anyone come in. He opened his eyes mostly to glare at Thomas.

“I did _not_ come here to get more stressed.”

Thomas raised his hands. “Sorry, man. You know the gym is a public space, right?”

Carry didn’t answer, just twisting to reach for his hand towel and clean his face before sweat got into his eyes.

“Is it because of what Keenan said yesterday?” His linemate asked, taking a seat on the next machine over.

Carry sat up so he could look at him. He turned to Thomas, heart racing. “What? Why…?”

“Oh, come on, you guys told me about the mindreading. Do you really think I wouldn’t make the connection?”

"I told you; there's no mind reading. We just get an inkling of where the other is or what he will do. And there’s no connection. His girlfriend is a lawyer; she obviously has some strong views about omega rights.”

“I haven’t really talked to Amalia,” Thomas admitted, “mostly because Keenan’s kept her well away from the team.” Carry ignored Thomas raised eyebrows at that. “But you know who else has strong views on omega rights?”

“That’s not it,” Carry dismissed easily. “He’s never listened to me about it before, why would he start now?”

For once, Thomas didn't press. He seemed tired all of sudden. “Okay, it’s just…" he sighed, "It made me think. Carry…” he rubbed his face.

He sat up, trying to find sings of an injury on the other's body. “What’s wrong?”

Thomas was half slumped onto his own lap. “The thing is… Uri is an alpha.”

“Oh,” Carry said, putting down the water bottle without drinking. “I had not idea.”

“Yeah, well,” Thomas licked his lips, “neither does he.”

“What?” Carry frowned at him. He was pretty sure there was nothing physically wrong with Thomas, at least, which was a relief in more than one way. They had a match coming up and he hadn't liked playing without him.

“I mean," Thomas amended, " _he_ knows, obviously, he just doesn’t know I have noticed.”

Was that a bad thing? Carry wondered. He’d been a beta as a child, of course, but he could barely remember if he’d known other people’s orientation back then, or if anybody had ever brought their own up for any reason. He’d known about orientation, of course, and probably that his parents were betas. But he thought most kids got that sooner rather than later, just from throwaway comments. Even though orientation was meant to be primarily about sex, it was still everywhere. In the colour coded products and protective gestures, in what adults found surprising from some people but not others.

For Carry, having presented earlier than most of his peers, it’d have had to be an adult to tell him about their own orientation, and adults weren’t mean to speak about those things. “Is that normal? Like, not telling? You guys have been seeing each other for ages.”

Thomas shrugged, massive arms slumping. “I don’t know, I guess… I mean, he doesn’t have to tell me, right?”

“I probably wouldn’t have told you,” Carry said, “not exactly the professional image I want to project.”

“Yeah, but that I totally get, because it’s professional and your… preferences and needs?” Thomas tried with a shy look. Carry shrugged at him, it was a word as good as any. “Well, that’s none of my business, it’s got nothing to do with hockey.” Carry nodded his approval but didn’t interrupt. “But Uri and I are _dating_ , I figure what turns him on is definitely my business, right?”

Carry hesitated, then thought about his interview for the Titans, about being asked if he was on suppressants and which and how well they worked. They had had a right to know that Carry was healthy enough to play and would continue to be so, but they hadn’t had a right to the details. They shouldn’t have had a right to ask for samples to send to a lab. They definitely hadn’t had a right to ask about Carry’s sexual partners. He’d given the right answer back then, the only answer they’d want to hear form an unbonded omega: none. That wouldn’t have affected his performance, it hadn’t with Pucio and it hadn’t with Avali. If anything, the escorts had helped him do his job better without having to take time off. But if they had wanted an omega to perform well, they'd have arranged for the escorts themselves.

“Is it… not good? Between you, I mean,” he asked Thomas.

“What? No! It’s great, like… really great.” Thomas swallowed, smiling a little, like he couldn’t help himself.

“So why would you need to know? He’s clearly happy with whatever you guys do together, you look like you might combust just thinking about it. What does it matter if he likes other things too?”

“Well, if he…” Thomas licked his lips, hesitating, “please don’t take this the wrong way, but if he finds an omega, if they are compatible…”

Carry laughed and Thomas looked alarmed before he waved it off. “No, no, I’m not offended. It’s just that being compatible doesn’t magically make for a perfect relationship. They love to make up stories about it. But… it doesn’t work like that. Just because an alpha and an omega are compatible, it doesn’t… they don’t have to be together. I mean, they might end up sleeping together, but that doesn’t last.” He shook his head and continued, “And there’s plenty of alpha/omega pairs who aren’t very compatible and have great marriages or whatever. And alpha/beta relationships, too.”

“Well, the only one I’ve seen didn’t end very well.”

“The alpha left the beta for an omega?” Carry guessed.

“Yes,” Thomas said, “and six months later, I was born.”

“Your mum is a beta?” Carry asked.

Thomas looked up for a second, shaking his head. “My dad’s an omega. And if they find out I’m getting between an alpha and his perfect mate…”

“Oh, fuck, Thomas…” Carry hesitated, then leaned forwards and squeezed his teamate’s arm.

“Pretty much,” Thomas confirmed. “I think I want to work out until I pass out now.

&

He’d wanted to say something to Thomas. Anything that could have made things a little better, but he was too rational to imagine there were any words of his that could change Thomas’ parents’ disapproval. His own parents were betas, but they’d always acted like Carry would settle down with an alpha and his sister with a beta. If he’d ever thought to ask, he could guarantee his mother would use the word ‘naturally’ at some point to explain her views. Never mind that millions of people seemed inclined to date outside the established tratiditional pairs, or didn’t want to date at all.

So he’d stayed at the gym with Thomas until way too late, and then dragged him to the restaurant around the corner for dinner. They’d both skipped practice the next morning, but a good night’s sleep—and Carry’s hadn’t been that good—couldn’t erase the anxiety. And Carry didn’t even have a real reason to be anxious: he didn’t _have_ to speak up when someone brought up Keenan’s interview. He could always change his mind and say something non-committal.

But with all that baggage, maybe it wasn’t surprising that they couldn’t make their game clinch the next day. Having their line back together wasn’t enough to make up for how distracted they all were. The magical silent peace stepping onto the ice brought Carry didn’t materialize this time. You couldn’t play hockey with your critical mind on, all the analysis had to happen unconsciously if you had any hope in Hades of moving fast enough. Keenan was open, but he wasn’t reacting fast enough, and Carry knew he himself kept missing chances. Thomas tried his best, but trying was the key word. Carry had hoped sharing his concerns would help him, but nobody who had seen their right-winger at his best would have been fooled.

The Seals weren’t slowing down. At this stage, the Seals had to be doing pretty well for themselves. They were no contenders for the cup as far as Carry was concerned, but they hadn’t made it to the quarters by accident either.

By second period, it was only Sven’s exceptional goal tending that was keeping them in the game at all. Carry’s chest hurt with how hard he’d been pushing himself and they had -2 goals to show for it. When their line was called off the ice, it was almost a relief. The second line went out fast and hard and Carry realised that Sandiego, Bauer and Patel had had less minutes on ice than they probably should have. It was a mistake, clearly, since less than a minute after coming on, Bauer gave Patel a beautiful assist that ended in a goal.

It was good hockey, they were a good line. And they hadn’t let whatever was happening in their private lives get in the way of the game, he thought and the shame was so intense he had to go around the bench to the little rest area. He drank from the juice kept there, but it was mostly the silence of the little room that he needed.

The door opened suddenly, startling him. Keenan was standing there. “You need to come back.”

Carry fumbled to put his gloves back. “Bauer is out, probably a concussion,” Keenan explained, projecting his worry loud and clear. “Coach wants you to go in.”

Carry shot him a concerned look as they tottered over to the bench area. “So I’ll go, what’s…”

“It’s nothing,” Keenan interrupted, probably feeling Carry’s confusion. “It’s just… you haven’t played with them during a game. Not since…”

Carry was about to respond when Coach called his name and he had to turn to the ice instead. The paramedics were helping Bauer slide slowly across the ice. A head injury could be dangerous but they were letting him use his own two feet; he must have passed the basic tests. “Are we on a power play?” he asked, shocked.

Thomas answered him, “Yeah, Bauer had just scored, that’s why they got so aggressive with him.”

Carry nodded, then exhaled and this time, with the ice, came the calm. He glanced at Patel for a second before the referee’s whistle sounded and the centre needed to look away. He’d been playing with Keenan for months, but he had been on the ice with Patel –the first line often played the second during practice, after all—and he knew the man wouldn’t do well in a face off against a faster player. The Seal’s centre was definitely faster. But being predictable was often worse than being a bad player. Carry didn’t need to wait for Patel to lose the puck, he was ready, knee bent and stick extended and in a matter of seconds he was rushing towards the Seals’ centre and snatching the puck he’d just won in the face off.

He was too close to see much and his mind went for Keenan’s on instinct. Keenan wasn’t on the ice and in all fairness he should have got disoriented, maybe fallen. But somehow his linemate was ready to push everything he could see towards him. It wasn’t clear images, but the shadows were in relation to his own position, not the bench. He didn’t look, his hands just moved to slide the puck over to Patel and he’d barely felt the sharp stab of success when it connected when he was pushing around a Seal defence woman and turning his body to block her view of his teammates. He’d glanced right just in time to see Patel lighting up the goal, and felt it to his bones when Keenan had fist bumped Thomas all the way back in the bench.

It was good, intense and awe-inspiring and he could barely breathe for the intensity of the connection, and then suddenly, right when the puck connected with his stick, Keenan pulled back. Carry staggered, confused, and the moment was enough for one of the defenders to get the puck off him. He tried to follow and almost stumbled, it was like the world had gone flat, and he couldn’t find his footing. He could barely skate, much less follow the puck. Then he was on the floor so maybe he couldn't skate after all.

He tried to get up but he couldn't quite bend his knees the right way and then the referee was there, asking him questions. He knew it was questions because of the tone and he could even have guessed at their meaning, but he couldn't understand a single word the woman was saying.

It was like he was in a bubble, no emotions and no words. Thomas was on the ice and with his help and Coach's he got to his feet. And then Coach was dragging him off the ice and onto the bench. He was talking, Carry knew he was, but the words still wouldn't make sense.

Not until Keenan stepped up to him and squeezed his arm.

“ _Johnson_ ,” he said and it went right through the fog. He blinked up at him, feeling his body all of sudden. His side hurt. He didn’t remember getting hit. Had he been hit? And then Keenan's hands were on his face. His _bare_ hands, and the words were words again. “No,” Keenan said firmly and he was using his alpha voice but Carry didn’t mind. It was like a hook, pulling him back to earth. “Don’t go away again.”

Carry frowned. “You…” he swallowed, getting lost in the colour of Keenan’s eyes. He had beautiful eyes, brown with a little gold in them and with dark long lashes.

“Is he in shock?” Coach asked.

“I don’t know, I think I can pull him back,” Keenan replied, and Carry wanted to complain. They weren’t supposed to tell other people about them. He knew that much. But then Keenan continued, “They teach you how to do it in school.”

Coach must have approved because the next thing he knew; Keenan was dragging him along to the break room. He'd let go of Carry's face, but it didn't seem to matter, it was like the heat of his touch was seared into his skin. Carry remembered sitting down on the bench in the juice room, and then Keenan removing his helmet, and Keenan’s hands on his cheeks. It’d almost hurt the second time, like water hurt on a parched throat. But then it’d been easier. He’d given in, let Keenan pull him out of his own mind with soft touches and softer words.

“I’m sorry, Carry,” Keenan was repeating when words started making continuous sense, “I fucked up, I shouldn’t have…”

Carry lifted his gloved hands and pushed him away. He wasn’t sure he could form words himself, but he didn’t want to hear it, at least not while he couldn’t understand it.

But Keenan couldn’t tell. “I shouldn’t have pulled back so suddenly, but it got so intense, I could _feel_ you. And then I remembered the… the bond, that you’d…  You can’t be out right now.”

He exhaled, trying to let the words go through him. He didn’t have the energy to get angry. “You…” he managed and his mouth was so dry he had to stop. There was juice on the table, his own glass still half-full, but he didn’t have the energy to reach for it. “You don’t know how to do it,” he managed.

“I… you are right, I don’t,” Keenan immediately conceded. “I just got scared. I’m really sorry.”

"You just touched me," Carry said. He couldn't even feel angry. He was too tired for that, and he didn't even feel vindicated when Keenan's eyes widened in horror.

"I..." His centre started, but Carry shook his head and let go of his shields. He didn't mean it as a punishment, he simply didn't have the psychic energy to control them any more. Keenan still flinched.

"I need a cab to go home," he said simply. Then he closed his eyes and let the wall hold him up while Keenan got his phone out and sorted out the details.

It would have been a miracle if they managed to win the game, and he was most certainly going to go into heat. There was pretty much no way the situation could be salvaged and for once, Carry was happy to accept defeat and go home.

&

If it had to happen—and he'd resigned himself it was the price of exploiting his bond with Avali—then it was better to know. He called the agency as soon as he got home, although from how impersonal the conversation was when he asked for the alpha he wanted by ID number, he could have easily have had it on the cab. He'd have enough sense left to pick up food from the little restaurant on his block—enough for two and for leftovers—and dropped everything on the table to go take a shower. His skin was starting to feel tight and overly sensitive and his clothes felt scratchy. He'd also skipped showering the rink and he might have been paying the alpha, but he wasn't going to receive him all sweaty from a game.

The lights flashing with the bell pulled him out of the daze he'd fallen into under the hot water, and he managed to stumble out of the shower without actually falling. He wrapped a towel around his middle but he tried to buzz his visitor in before realising he was upstairs—he'd given the agency both the buildings and the flat's keys for emergencies.

Leon didn't wait to be invited in. He gave Carry his usual sharp smile, predatory but pleased, and took him by the elbow a moment before he swayed in place. "Wow, the dispatcher said you didn't seem close," he commented. He was experienced enough to know better than Carry that words would be difficult at this point so he just walked him to the bedroom. Carry sat down and let him pat his hair dry enough not to soak the sheets. Then he was being pushed into the bed and that woke him right up, suddenly he was arching back onto Leon's weigh, kissing him fiercely and demanding to be fucked.

Business as usual. And as usual, the alpha delivered the release Carry needed so badly.

It was easy, easier than it would have been if Carry had let his heat rise fully. The food was still warm enough when he was feeling a little more stable, and afterwards they had sex again. Slowly, from one time to the next, it went from crazy crawling need to dazed hedonistic enjoyment.

And throughout the whole thing, Carry didn't think of Keenan's hands once.

&

It was hard to ignore the half dozen texts on his phone the next morning, so he just dropped Avali one back to let him know he was doing fine. He just needed to sleep it off. Like the flu. Avali didn't seem ready to let it rest, though, because almost at once he got another message asking if there was anything he needed.

[I have delivery] he wrote, as curtly as he could. The last thing he needed was to see Avali more than he habitually did. Even without the touching, it had been building up to this anyway. This morning, in the wreckage of his and Leon's used sheets, Carry was feeling a lot less impressed about Avali's outburst of protectiveness.

But if the bond had been pulling him towards a heat... Well, that explained why having Keenan speak of the rights of omegas had been so powerful.

Next time he was going all starry-eyed, he just had to ask for a handshake. He could even _time_ his heats that way. He'd never have to miss a game again, never look like he couldn't do his job, never wonder why his team and coach put up with it.

He went to bed early and woke up refreshed and with plenty of time for breakfast so, all in all, he was in a fairly good mood when he showed up for morning skate.

Keenan's eyes were on him the moment he walked into the changing room, but he stayed put with a short a nod from Carry.

He should have known it was too much to hope that he’d be able to keep whatever was going through his head to himself for long. He was waiting outside when Carry came out of his extra long shower.

It wasn’t even subtle. “Thomas took off,” he told Carry, “he seems stressed, doesn’t he?”

“He is,” Carry said, suddenly feeling like a terrible friend. Thomas had no asked for help, exactly, but neither had Carry. Thomas had seen he’d seen he needed someone to run interference and he’d stepped up. If anybody ever discovered what he and Keenan could do, they’d either get banned or hailed as heroes, but nobody would realise how essential Thomas had been. Maybe it was true was some religions claimed: it wasn’t the pair that was magical but the trinity. “Alpha problems,” he added, keeping his shields at half mast so he could assess Keenan’s gut reaction.

“Alpha…?” Keenan echoed. “Oh, like… but wasn’t he dating that lawyer?”

Carry raised an eyebrow. “What? Lawyering is an omega profession?”

“What?” Keenan was frowning already, but he didn’t sound really bothered. He rarely got worked up about Carry challenging him anymore. “No, he just never said the guy was an alpha so…”

“So you assumed he was a beta,” Carry concluded. Suddenly he was wondering if Thomas would have minded if he found out he’d told Keenan. But surely not, if anything, Thomas had to be closer to Keenan than to Carry and there was nobody less likely to spread rumours either.

Keenan shrugged. “Hey, so would anybody. Most people are.”

“Especially people who date betas?” Carry pushed. He didn’t know why. It was a perfectly reasonable assumption, but there was just something about his alpha teammate that made him itch to… He didn’t know, but it helped to shock him.

“I’ve dated betas,” the alpha declared almost too casually. Not that he needed to be careful of Carry’s feelings, of course. “A lot more than omegas.”

Carry had to bite his tongue, but he didn’t ask. “He thinks it can’t last,” he said.

Keenan froze, hesitant. “Can we go somewhere else?”

He glanced around. He felt like a right idiot, how could he have lost track that they practically in public?

“Sure, the smoothie place?”

They didn’t close their shields back up on the two blocks there and the beta waitress didn’t even glance their way when she took their orders. It seemed okay, even if Carry hadn’t let his guard down like this in years.

“Had this alpha ever... Dated omegas?”

“I don’t know; does it matter?

“For me... I, yes." He sounded like regretted admitting it.

"Oh, so before you... "

"I was happy with betas," Keenan interrupted, almost like he was afraid of what Carry would say. "If I had been older, I’d have married my last beta girlfriend."

"And now you wouldn’t."

“No,” Keenan said.

“Fuck, poor Thomas.”

“Maybe it’s me," Keenan offered, "or maybe it’s heat sex…” he trails off and Carry carefully didn’t look up from his tasteless drink.

“It’d make sense. You can get addicted to drugs, why not hormone-induced highs?” he mused and then something else occurred to him. “And even if he dated omegas, he wouldn’t have….” He looked away, pretending his cheeks weren't flushing. “I mean, it’s unlikely.”

"Very unlikely," Keenan agreed, and Carry pretended he couldn't hear him swallowing thickly, and that their mutual discomfort wasn't coating the whole room.

"Could you... You could talk to him about this. I mean, it would mean a lot to him, and it'd help the team too. If he was feeling less anxious about this..."

"By Hades, Carry, I don't need a reason to help Thomas, he's my friend."

"Okay, okay, I just..." He took a sip, and dared a glance up. "I told him it would be fine, that even if his alpha met a compatible omega, it didn't mean he'd get together with them. If I'm wrong, maybe it's better if you tell him."

"You are not wrong," Keenan replied. "At least I don't think you are. I'm not... I can't speak for all alphas."

"Guess I need to do what I preach," Carry agreed. He'd been asked not to be judged by his orientation all his life and here he was trying to get Keenan to explain his own.

"But I will talk to Thomas, even if I only confuse him more, it's still the right thing to do."

"Okay, so..."

"Are you really not angry at me?" Keenan blurted out, and Carry looked at him in surprise.

"Why would I be?"

"Because I..." he lowered his voices, eyes darted around unsubtly, "I touched you and it..." Thankfully he didn't finish the sentence.

Carry shrugged. "You had to do it, I was in pretty bad shape. It's a miracle I didn't skate into the boards," he admitted.

"But that was my fault too!"

"How? It was my idea to use the bond to play."

"Yes, but I'm the one who lost control! I'm the one who pulled back too fast and..."

Carry raised a hand, shaking his head, and Keenan stopped talking like he'd run out of air. It was exactly the kind of thing that had happened to him all his life when an alpha wanted him to be quiet and for a moment he wondered if somehow he'd managed to reverse the effect. But Keenan tilted his head inquisitively, waiting for whatever he was about to say. He'd chosen to do it, Carry realised. And he wasn't sure if that was the strangest thing of all.

"I asked you to do this with me, even though I know you have no training besides what little they do in school and you've told me you weren't even good at that. It's dangerous, but it's a risk _I_ chose to take. I can't get mad because you fucked up when you warned me you have no idea what you are doing, can I?"

"That doesn't mean you can't get angry," Keenan insisted. "I'm not asking why you aren't punching me. I just want to know how you can be so calm, like I didn't hurt you."

“Because you’re trying!" Carry snapped, raising his voice, and had to wave an apology at the waitress when she looked their way. "Alright?" He asked Keenan, meeting his eyes and leaning close. "You’re fucking trying. Do you have any idea how many people I can say that about in my life?”

Keenan was almost slumped into his chair and with his musculature it must have been an effort to look so dejected. "What good is it that I'm trying if it ends like this?" He asked with bright eyes

Carry didn't have time for softness, though. He looked at him in disbelief. "You can’t be asking me this, Avali, you’re a _professional sportsman_. What good is it that we tried when we lose then?" He asked, echoing the message they'd sang since they were children.

"We became better," Keenan dutifully answered. It was almost embedded into him, he'd said it so many times in little league. To strive for more and not for perfect. For growth and not for victory. It was nice if you could get both, sure. But if you couldn't, you had to forgive yourself.

"There you go," Carry said almost annoyed. He didn't see why he had to explain something so elementary. "Keep trying and you’ll become better. That's all I ask."

Keenan watched him for a moment longer, like he still couldn't quite believe him. But then he said the right thing. "Same there. I expect we won't be doing anything like that again until we have practice it"

"Got it in one." Carry got to his feet, abandoning his half finished drink. "I'll see you tomorrow at practice."


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Expanded the scene at the beginning of this chapter to include a Thomas + Keenan heart-to-heart that will become plot relevant later on. Sorry? But there's feels!

##  & Keenan

 

Carry was okay. He hadn't even tried to hide behind his shields more than usual the day after he'd returned from heat leave. He didn't even seem uncomfortable that Keenan had caused it. And if he didn't mind, Keenan certainly had no right to make a fuss about it. He'd fucked up and nothing had happened to him. Carry might excuse him for his inexperience, but if he'd managed it for months without sending his teammate into a catatonic state, he should have managed last game too. If he hadn't somehow known how to help him, if something had happened to him… The memory of Carry's slack face kept intruding on his thoughts and he wanted… he wanted to talk about it, just say it out loud to see if that got it out of his head.

But there wasn't anybody he could tell.

He kind of wanted to talk to Amalia about it, but even though there was no intention behind either of their actions, he knew it'd hurt her. Alphas were not the only ones who were naturally possessives; omegas just weren't typically violent about their jealousy. He couldn't talk to his family either. Tzeera was out—she was Amalia's friend first—and he had never told his parents because he'd promised Carry to keep it quiet.

He had told Sven, of course, but he already knew what Sven would say. They weren't fighting exactly, but alphas had their own protocols and Keenan had made it clear that their omega teammate was off-limits as a conversational topic. Sven would only bring it up if he thought the situation was desperate. And if Keenan did, Sven would have implicit permission to be honest. He was wrong, of course; Keenan was with Amalia and things were going great. But that didn't mean his speculations didn't make him uncomfortably aware of the attraction he put so much effort into ignoring. And he needed to ignore it, for the team's sake, for whatever friendship Carry and he had managed to scrape together. And anyway, Sven had no reason to know a thing about accessing a half-formed bond and dragging the omega on the other side so far into their own head they couldn't find their way out again.

He just needed to get over it on his own. Carry was fine, and he could see that as many times as he liked until his stupid paranoid unconscious mind got over the shock or whatever.

Carry was fine, and so was Keenan.

But Thomas wasn't. As alternate captain, it was really his job to look after his teammates anyway. But with Thomas, it went well beyond that. The guy had had his back every step of the way, even more than Sven during his rookie year—given, he'd not needed nearly as much hand holding as a rookie as he did now that he’d met his one true pair.

He did't know if he could really offer any useful insights into Thomas' alpha, but he had to at least try. He considered texting but ended up calling because he had no clue what to say and at least that way Thomas could interrupt him before he said something offensive.

“Hello?” Thomas sounded uncertain. “Did I forget an extra practice?”

Keenan winced. It was already seven and even more tellingly, the only reason Thomas assumed Keenan had to call him was hockey.

“No, it’s not... I'm not calling about that. I noticed you weren't... You wanna talk about it?”

He could almost hear the stunned silence on the other side of the line.

“Carry spoke to you.”

“Is that... I'm sorry if that's not cool. He only—”

“Oh, shut it, Avali,” Thomas cut in. “It's not like you couldn't smell it on me anyway.”

“What?”

“That I'm dating an alpha. I mean, I know I have shown to practice without showering once or twice.”

Now it was Keenan who was too shocked to respond. “Thomas... I don't go around smelling people. Omegas and alphas don’t actually have super noses, we just translate people’s mental presence into scent so we can understand it. That’s why the mental blocks help you not notice but they don’t stop you from being attracted to someone who is compatible. I had no idea you were dating anyone until you told me.”

“Oh.” He heard his friend swallow. “Sorry, that was... That was dumb.”

“It's cool. You don't have much reason to know about alphas...” He trailed off.

“Not until now,” Thomas acknowledged. “But I guess I should find out. I mean, do you think it's pointless? Will he... Is he going to leave?”

“Oh, fuck, Thomas, I don't even know the guy's name! I can't tell you what he'll do.” He paced down his leaving room and pushed his forehead against the cool window looking out into the city below. He was useless for this; he hadn't even noticed when he'd met his one true pair, what hope did he have of helping with a relationship that needed words?

“Uri,” Thomas offered.

“I can tell you one thing: if he's never dated an omega, or if he's never been with an omega in heat... Then I think he could stay.”

Thomas bit out a pained sound. “Is it really...?”

Keenan swallowed. “Yes. But... it's only one thing. I was... I was going on marry my last girlfriend before that. She is a beta and she is amazing. We still talk sometimes. But she didn't want to wait around while I did the hockey thing, and she didn't... She didn't believe me when I told her she was enough.”

“Was she wrong?”

“Yes,” Keenan gritted out. “She was... everything. She was the only thing I actually wanted other than hockey. She was worth going home early for, and... She knew how to call me out on my bullshit. The... the sex was great, too. I didn't need more. I was happy until... Sometimes I wish I didn't know. I feel like a junkie. I can't even tell if I want... someone because of them or because we are compatible.”

“I thought things with Amalia were going okay...”

Keenan froze, feeling his stomach turn. “Yes! They are. Great. More than. But it’s... There’s all this... Danger, I guess. It seems much easier to fuck up when you are with someone who needs you to be careful. It’s worth it, it’s so... I’m not complaining. Just... I was happy before, _really_ happy. I would have loved her for the rest of my life, no questions.”

“But you would have wondered...”

“Sure, and I also wonder about threesomes. Doesn’t mean I’ll step out to try it.”

“You know it’s not the same; when you... I mean, if you meet someone compatible, don’t you...” He swallowed. “Don’t you need it?”

“What?” Keenan asked, baffled. “Mate, where are you getting your information? TV dramas?”

“My parents.”

“Oh.” He thought about apologizing, but he could hardly go on TV saying he believed omegas had to be treated like everyone else and then tell one of his friends his parents were right when they told him alphas and omegas were meant to follow their biology no matter what. “Well, it’s not like that. Scent is interesting and all, I’ll give you that. But even if you are very compatible with someone—”

“Like a one true pair?

Keenan paused for too long at that, and he hoped like hell he sounded casual enough when he dismissed the comment, “Yeah. Anyway, even if they smell great… that’s pretty much it. Protocol dictates you’d never touch them and they’d never touch you. Touching an omega you’re compatible with is… Well, pretty intense, but so is touching someone anyone you find attractive. It’s more… it’s different, but I wouldn’t say it’s better.”

“But heat is.”

“Yes.” It was harder to admit than he wanted. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t a betrayal of either Jessica or Amalia, much less his sexuality. It was just hormones he had no control over. Carry clearly hated his heats and Keenan wasn’t far behind. Except he loved them too. He never wanted to experience one again and he couldn’t wait for it to happen all at once. He hadn’t lied: it felt like an addiction. Not like hockey felt like an addiction, where he knew he could stop but didn’t want to. With heat, he honestly wasn’t sure if he’d be able to stop himself. Not even if… But of course an omega in heat would never say no. They couldn’t. “It’s better _sex_ ,” he tried to explain.

“Well, that’s…” Thomas cleared his throat. “Is there something else to it?”

“There’s the morning after, for one,” Keenan said quietly. He still remembered the sting of Carry’s rejection. Rejections. He’d pulled away as soon as he’d been able both time and lashed out viciously too. And it’d taken Keenan this long to understand why. He was so stupid. “You go through something like that with someone, and then… Well, it doesn’t mean you have anything, once it’s done. It’s like any one night stand, only you feel like you have just slept with the love of your life.”

“Fuck,” Thomas exhaled. “Keenan… Wait, what? A one-night-stand? But you guys are still…” He stopped abruptly. “You are not talking about Amalia, are you?”

Keenan realised his mistake at once. But Thomas had been with the team almost two seasons and they’d been friendly enough for all that time. He knew Keenan’s dating history.

“Wasn’t Jessica the beta girl who broke up with you after we lost the wildcard game with the Cascades?”

“We are not talking about this,” Keenan cut him off. He didn’t mean for it to come out as an order, much less for it to be charged heavily with alpha will. His teeth were bared and he was tense and ready… He clenched his eyes shut, shaking his head to try and get back to normal.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas said after a moment. “You’re trying to help, I didn’t mean to pry.”

Except of course he had because Thomas was an unrepentant gossip and he always did. Keenan had never minded before. He’d never had a secret like this before. “It’s fine,” he managed to say. “You should… you should give Uri a chance. Tell him you know.”

“I can’t,” Thomas said, sounding torn. “I looked at his ID.”

“So? Did he tell you not to?”

“No, but how am I going to explain that I got bored while he was showering and I looked through his wallet?”

“That’s… why did you?”

“I was bored. The remote was too far. I thought maybe he’d look a little less insanely hot on his ID picture and I could tease him about it.”

He couldn’t help it, he laughed. “Sorry, but… that’s completely stupid, mate.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why he’s the lawyer and I’m the one getting paid to take pucks to the head.”

“Oh, come off it. You messed up, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not like most people have secrets this big in their wallets. Like, even cheaters probably bother removing their family instants before going to see their mistresses.”

“Oh, god,” Thomas groaned. “Now you’re making me sorry I didn’t check all the pockets!”

“Thomas,” Keenan said gently. “He must be afraid you won’t go for it if you know, you realise that, don’t you?”

“Well, what if I don’t want to go for it?” Thomas demanded almost angrily.

“Then don’t, but it doesn’t sound like you don’t. Just from here where I’m watching you obsess.”

“Ah, shove off!” he replied. But he sounded tired, not even a little riled anymore. He couldn’t even wait for Keenan’s response before he added, “Thanks for this. It’s… appreciated.”

“No problem. You good for now?”

“Yeah. Think I need some time to think it through, but… Yeah, you gave me some ideas.”

“Good, make a list or something like they do in the telenovelas. Will sort you right out!”

Thomas laughed at that, still a little weary but honest too, Keenan could tell. “Night, Keenan.”

“Night, see you tomorrow.”

 

&

 

He had known people fought for omega rights. In the abstract, it came up on TV sometimes. But he had never met an activist in his life, his family wasn't excessively traditional but it was mostly composed of professionals. It had just never come up.

So he wasn't expecting the call, a confident alpha voice on the other end greeting him by name and asking for a meeting. "A meeting?" Keenan repeated.

"We saw your last interview; we think you would want to hear what we have to say."

"I'm sorry,” he said, "but I can't. I've got to give another interview about it and..."

"To apologize?" She asked contemptuously.

"No," he gritted out, "to explain."

"Is there really a difference?" She challenged.

"Yes, there is. Not that it's any of your business."

"It is all of our business," she argued, "and our responsibility too. You opened a door that can lead to something better and now you are going to let them close it again?"

"I'm not a politician, I just play hockey..."

"Bullshit!” she snapped, and he was so shocked that she would interrupt him that he let her continue despite the clear challenge. “You've got their attention! You've fans who listen to everything you say. You are not 'just' anything."

"You want me to fight for omega rights?” he gritted out, “What about the omegas in my life? Shouldn't they get a say?"

"So you would rather they keep being treated like shit all their lives just so you don't have to let them go?" The alpha asked incredulously.

"What?" Keenan said.

Her voice was softer this time, but more convincing for it. She sounded like she understood. "Would you rather stay with her than help make her life better?"

"I..." He swallowed, choked and awful and at a loss for words because there wasn't an answer that was right.

"If you believe in anything about alphas," she continued, so soft it was almost pleading, "You must believe we are meant to protect them."

"I don't... I don't believe we are meant to _choose for them_ ," Keenan managed to say, and that was right. That was true.

"Then choose for you," she said immediately, "you know what's true and you know what's right. Don't take the easy way out. Don't take it back."

She hadn't waited for an answer, just hung up. But it'd been too late already.

 

&

 

The interview was the next day after their game and that afternoon at practice he was so distracted he managed to incur Carry's wrath.

"Your mind is like a fucking bee's nest!" His left-winger snapped once he'd pulled Keenan to the side of the ring.

"I'm sorry," Keenan said helplessly. "I just... tomorrow..."

"What about tomorrow? Since when do you panic about a game?"

"Not the game, the interview!" And right then it didn't matter how blank Carry's face had gone because they were still both halfway open–the way they always practiced right before a game. And Carry was full of apprehension, too, but there was also something that it took Keenan a moment to recognize: hope.

"I thought the PR people gave you a speech?" He asked, all his confidence gone, all his rage doused.

Keenan nodded, glancing towards their teammates zooming around on the ice. He knew Carry could feel him too but not looking at him was the only thing keeping him from closing up his mind with a slam.

"Someone called me," he admitted, feeling ashamed of it because it shouldn't have been someone else's idea, but that was exactly why he couldn't hide it. He couldn't take credit for it, not when it'd taken Carry to make him see and a stranger to make him remember, "I don't even know who they were, but I think... they said I shouldn't back off."

Carry was silent and his mind was all over the place. "It's your decision," he finally said, sounding as unsure as he felt. Keenan remembered thinking Carry was cold; he couldn't understand how he'd missed the subtle nuances in his voice and body language that were so obvious now.

Keenan turned to look at him, knowing there would be nothing more on his face but needing to anyway. "I know," he said, "that's what she said. But... what if I take the easy way out because Amalia asked me to and that means nothing changes? That means people still treat her like that, treat..." He stopped himself but it was hardly necessary, he was too upset to hold onto his mental shields when they were halfway lowered already.

"Me?" Carry asked, although it wasn't a question.

"You don't deserve that."

"You don't owe me a thing," Carry said firmly, "I don't expect you to go on talking about omega rights..."

"No, no, it's not about owing!" Keenan interrupted, and then saw coach approaching them from the side. "Fuck, I..." But he didn't need to speak, Carry was already turning towards Coach.

His poker face served him well there. "Would it be okay if Avali and I go run over his interview questions? It's messing with our game."

Coach frowned, but he nodded with a sigh. "That goddamned interview... Sure, get your heads on straight!"

 

&

 

They were silent until they got to the locker room. Then Keenan realised that they were alone and they were about to undress. "Should I...?" he stuttered.

But Carry just gave him an impatient look. "Like I've got something you haven't seen?" He asked sarcastically.

Keenan snorted, not able to hold back a smile. "Okay, that was dumb."

Carry didn't dignify that with an answer, but he shot him an amused look before starting on his skates. And then it wasn't weird. Keenan had spent the whole season avoiding Carry's side of the room, even after they'd slept together. Maybe especially then. And here they were: arguing about where they should go to talk.

"Oh, forget it, just come to mine," Carry said, closing his locker. He had his back to Keenan but neither of them had closed up again—maybe because this was too important to discuss half blind—and Keenan could tell it wasn't as simple as Carry wanted it to sound.

"Okay," he said, aiming for casual and knowing he was busted before the words even left his mouth.

Carry turned, and tilted his chin towards the door. "Come on, then."

When they left the stadium, he looked at Keenan again and explained, "I'm not going into public transport like this." And then he'd closed back up, and Keenan had as well. He wanted the time to feel anxious and worried, and then maybe when they got there, he'd be able to let it go.

They'd picked up some takeaway on the way to Carry's flat, and he'd set up the table and ordered Keenan to sit and start talking.

"I... where was I?" He asked, staring blankly at Carry's efficient unpacking. His hands looked big on his wrists, and his fingers almost too thin for the strength they packed.

Carry paused, then, in an oddly formal voice, asked him, "Do you want to open up for this?" And he didn't need to be open for Keenan to see how hard it was for him to ask. He wasn't trying to hide it at all.

He nodded and closed his eyes and went for it, all the way. It was almost too intense to do it off the ice, but Carry followed, slowly, like he could actually slide the door open progressively. And then they were bare and Keenan couldn't lift his gaze from the tabletop. The bond was there still, it wasn't gone, and Keenan had to swallow against the relief and the guilt both.

Carry slid a plate across the table without asking, but there was no way he could eat, not before he got out what was lodged in his throat. "I can't lie. I can't... I can't watch and pretend I can't do anything when it's not true. I've fans and they would, well, they'll think about it if I say something. And there's got to be other people. It was an alpha who called me, and she thought it was important to defend omega rights too, so..."

It was odd because earlier Carry had seemed hopeful, but now he almost felt… afraid. His voice was calm when he spoke, though, “I don't know what to tell you. Of course there are people trying to change things for omegas, and there's people who want to get rid of all cars, and there's people who think we shouldn't try and colonize other planets, not even visit them to take samples. What do _you_ think? That's what matters.”

Keenan swallowed, but he knew the answer to that. It wasn't what he needed to know. “What do you think?” he countered, shocking Carry right to the bone by the feel of it.

His lips remained parted while he stared at Keenan, then he looked down at his plate and started cutting his food. “That's not the point, and I'm hardly going to be against omega rights, am I?”

“You don't need to be against omega rights to want a quiet life.”

Carry snorted, bitterness spilling all over them both. “A quiet life? And how am I supposed to get that?”

“Do you mean because of the reporters?” he asked.

Carry looked up at him, and bitterness had soured into utter despair. “I mean because of everybody. Even people who don't care, like Thomas, can't really forget I'm an omega, not when it's the first thing they put after my name every…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “It doesn't matter. It won't matter if I ask for it.”

“It would,” Keenan blurted out before he could think better of it. Carry glanced up, half-hopeful, half-annoyed, and he had no choice but to finish. He looked at his own food and found something to do with it that was logical enough to justify his attention. “It would matter to me. It matters to me, what you want.”

“I told you,” Carry insisted between gritted teeth, “you don't have to…”

“I know I don't have to!” Keenan almost snapped. “Why would I need to be forced to do the right thing? I want to do it!”

And Carry had stopped trying to speak, looking shocked and feeling… it wasn't hope exactly, it was too cautious for that and Keenan couldn't concentrate enough, his own mind was twirling with emotions: apprehension and fear and sadness and righteousness. He'd known he had to do this. He hadn't needed to speak to Carry. He'd just wanted the reassurance, he'd wanted… He'd needed to see the need in Carry, a need he could remedy, or try to.

Carry swallowed, then exhaled and slowly closed his mind up, not moving at all or looking Keenan's way until Keenan reacted and did the same. He met Keenan's eyes across the table then. “Okay,” he declared, “you can do it if you want to. But not for me. And you can't let it mess with our game. Hockey has to come first. We…” He swallowed. “We made a commitment, all of us, and we can't just drop that.”

“Of course,” Keenan readily agreed. “I wouldn't…”

Carry raised a hand, eyes serious. “I know, but I just wanted to make it very clear: there's no point if hockey is gone. If I could give it up… Well, what would they have to write about?”

“I understand,” he insisted and gripped onto his fork to keep from reaching out for Carry's hand instead.

Carry nodded, then offered, “Do you want me to heat that up?”


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiny update, but oth, I have started editing C.I. from the beginning and should be able to keep writing soon :)

## &

## Cartwright

He’d insisted Keenan had to call PR and get them to rewrite his speech. But Keenan had argued him down to talking to his sister instead, even though she was only almost a lawyer. If he’d ever needed proof of how irrational the man made him, there was some more.

In any case, there was very little Keenan could say to the press that would really get him more than a slap to the wrist. That was the whole point of an alpha speaking up for omegas, after all. If Carry had said anything, they’d all have assumed he just couldn’t cope with his hormones and was trying to make excuses for it by demanding to be treated more like an alpha or a beta. A good omega was happy being submissive, after all, and a happy omega had no reason to complain.

He didn’t have time for any of it, anyway. He’d encouraged Keenan to do the right thing when asked --well, supported his very obvious need to do it—and that was the end of his involvement. Hockey _had_ to come first, and it’d never been hard to concentrate on it before. All his life, it’d been the place where he was free, where his body stopped holding him hostage and he took control instead.

His instincts belonged on the ice, and –as dangerous as hockey could be--, they were safe to let loose there. On the ice, he had a fair chance of winning every time he played, and that was much better odds than anywhere else.

It was just ridiculous to want to be elsewhere, so he pushed it all out of his mind during practice that morning and opened up wide to Keenan to shove him into the right mindset as well –it wasn’t his responsibility, but he could hardly keep his focus if his linemate was distracted.

&

He’d been worried about their performance on the ice, but he shouldn’t have been. Maybe it was just that the prospect of Keenan’s speech seemed so much more worrying, but the game was easy. It just came to them, half-way open to each other and turning to signal to Thomas at the right times without doubling their signals even once. They’d scored before the first five minutes were up and it wasn’t until they were on the bench that Carry realised it’d been his own goal. Thomas actually shook him. “What even…” he started to say, then glanced at Keenan before shaking his head at Carry, “are you on actual drugs?” he asked, voice full of wonder and joy.

Carry laughed, too high on endorphins to do anything else. “I think I might have inhaled something, yeah.”

Keenan was thrumming with energy on Thomas’ other side and Carry leaned forward to meet his eyes. Keenan did the same, knowing Carry wanted him and they smiled at each other too hard for a moment before the game distracted them.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry in advance! But also, hope you like it :p At least it's pretty long!

**&**  

 **Keenan**  

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Tzeera asked one more time as she hugged him after the game. She’d come over earlier to take him to lunch before the game and it’d run over into his pre-game nap. But it wasn’t like he’d have been able to sleep, he’d hardly managed to get to unconsciousness the night before.  

He nodded, not bothering with words. He couldn’t explain any better than he already had, and—afraid as she might have been for him, for his career—she didn’t seem capable of understanding, or believing, his reasons were solid enough he wouldn’t change his mind. He thought they’d found a middle ground between declaring himself a radical and smoothing his ideals into invisibility, but of course the best one could hope of compromise was not to piss off anybody excessively. Amalia was too busy dealing with a case to ask her to listen to his newly modified speech, so all he had managed was to text her that he’d decided to change things a little with Tzeera. 

At least the game had gone well, so they’d have to acknowledge that before they asked him about his views on omegas. Carry was across the locker room, closed like a thrice chained up chest at the bottom of the ocean, and Keenan made very sure to do the same and not to look his way at all as the PR person led him to a separate room.  

There were no softball questions, they went right for the throat. “Your girlfriend is a lawyer, is that where you got all these liberal ideas about independent omegas?” 

“No,” he said, a little quieter but they ate it right up, shutting right up now that they wanted to catch every single word he said. “It’s my own opinion, based on my own experiences. I don’t think we treat omegas with enough respect. I think we should let them choose their own professions and their own relationships, and how those relationships work. Betas do it all the time: they’ve relationships like equals.” 

“But betas don’t have instincts!” 

He shook his head. “They do. We are all animals, we all got them. It’s just about whether we let them take over our lives. And we don’t: nobody is okay with murder just because rage is natural. So why are we okay with using a biological difference to determine what someone can and cannot do with their own lives?” He swore to himself. But the milder analogy Tzeera had coined had flown right out of his mind. 

“But you can’t deny omegas are naturally inclined to be nurturing—” 

“I think each omega is inclined to different things, and if we stop telling them what it’s natural, they’ll do those things. Whatever it is that makes them happy. And if they’re happy… well, if a third of our population is happier, I think we’ll all be better off for it.” 

“But what do you want to do about it? I mean, the law says there can be no discrimination, it’s not like we can go into people’s houses and…” A lady reporter said. He thought she was a beta, although he couldn’t tell with how closed off he was.  

And that was the first but not the worst of the questions he couldn’t quite answer. 

“I want to say it, so we all know. So alphas know, and betas, and omegas too because if you tell someone all their lives who they are... They might need to be told that nobody’s handing out permits to be an omega, that whatever they want to become, they can.” 

“But how is this going to help people?” 

“It’s helped me,” he said and he almost stopped when he heard the raw sincerity in his voice. “It wasn’t easy, because it’s never easy to admit you were wrong, and it’s much worse when you missed something as obvious as this. But I’d rather know, I would rather be sure I’m doing the right thing, not just what everyone else is doing.” 

“What about people who think alphas should protect omegas?” It was an alpha asking, Keenan didn’t need his nose to tell. 

He knew what he should say. The words were clear in his mind—he'd talked it over with Amalia and Tzeera and the PR person who was glaring at him meaningfully from the back of the room—and it wasn’t even that he didn’t believe everyone was entitled to their opinion. But saying that would mean something else here. It’d mean it was okay to keep forcing omegas to accept protection, and the control over their life that was the price of that safety. 

“I think they are wrong,” he said and had to wait until the sharp inhalations and various shocked noises abated. He very intentionally kept his eyes away from the PR person. “I don’t think you can generalize like that about any group of people," he explained. He didn't allow his expression to change, he wasn't going to be accused of being too personally involved. "Not all omegas need protection and not all omegas want help from every alpha they meet. The only thing we all want is to be treated with respect, and that means to be asked what we want.” 

“Are you suggesting traditional alphas don’t ask?” 

"I’m suggesting we are all taught to make assumptions based on someone’s orientation. Omegas do it too, which is why alphas are taught to be so careful around them. It’s--" 

"Has that been a problem for you personally?" 

"Well, a little, it’s made things awkward, mostly." 

The PR person got to their feet, chair scrapping against the floorboards and Keenan couldn't help to turn at the sound. He stuttered, but it was a blessing in disguise because if they made it about him, it would mean it wasn't about them. "All of us have gone through those moments. Like, say an omega kindly holds a door open for an alpha and the alpha freezes, turning a nice gesture into a social faux pas. Or worse, if the alpha doesn't stop and they both go on their way, it might be another alpha who looks down at them for breaking protocol." He had to pause and take a drink of water. "It's not helping anybody, and it's doing a lot of harm." 

"Holding doors open?" Someone asked and Keenan glanced around to try and find them, but there were plenty of sceptical expressions. 

"Well, if an omega can't hold a door open, can they play professional hockey?" He asked. "A stick is rather heavy, as we all know." 

"Are you speaking of Johnson?" 

"Sure," Keenan said. "And of James Blassic and of Paul Sire, and the three other omegas in the whole of the league." 

"So what are you saying? That alphas are keeping omegas from playing?" 

"We are all keeping omegas from playing," Keenan almost snapped back. He didn't see what was so complicated about it. He inhaled, trying to remain calm, tried to remind himself that he hadn't seen it either until it had been pointed out to him. "Because we say they need protection all the time, we say they are weak and they say it too, most of them end up believing it. And if you are weak, you have to let other people make choices for you because you _need_ them." 

"Are you going to deny omegas need alphas during heat?" The alpha from earlier asked, he sounded calm, which made Keenan want to punch him and the PR person step forward. They should have sent an alpha, he thought meanly as he watched them approach, a beta would never understand. 

But then the PR person, Jay, Keenan did know their name, stepped next to Keenan and faced the reporters. "What Mr. Avali means is that omegas should be afforded as many choices as possible when they are physically and psychologically able to make them, of course." 

Someone must have opened their mouth because Jay raised their hands. "No, that will be enough for tonight. If you have any further questions, feel free to email them to us and we will get back to you shortly." 

The reporters grumbled but went away. Keenan they could have harassed for a few minutes at least, but the PR representatives could blacklist anybody from getting any future interviews with the team. 

Keenan let Jay lead him away without trying to object: he'd been slowly losing it. Why had he thought he could do this? But the answer was quite clear still: it didn't matter if he was good at it because nobody else was trying at all, and it needed saying. Even if the only thing he managed was to get people thinking about it... He still needed to do it, no matter the cost to his reputation. 

 

& 

 

"Keenan," she said it like it hurt her throat, but she had asked him in, she was willing to listen. He could still... 

"I... know I didn’t say what you expected. I talked to Tzeera about it, but then they kept asking and--" 

"And you said what you thought," Amalia finished, resigned. Why could he never stop disappointing her? She was amazing and he loved her so much, so why couldn't he be good enough? Why couldn't she be enough for him to keep his mouth shut? 

"I said too much, I didn’t mean to talk about myself so much, to imply--" 

She sighed, slumping against the wall at her back. There was a picture of her family behind her on the wall. He’d never seen it before; they rarely spent any time in her tiny rented flat. He’d thought that was about the size and comfort his own provided, but maybe it was about _his_ comfort. Maybe she had been letting him have his own territory where he’d feel safer and more secure. Glancing around, he was almost sure because all that this space didn’t have on size, it had on love. There were pictures of people hugging Amalia and each other, and trinkets—some glued together—and even some school art by childish hands. 

"It’s your life," she said. "I can’t tell you what to do." 

"What about your life? What about the consequences to you? It could help change things—" 

“You think this is what can change things? You going on about respecting omegas on sports TV?” She demanded and he froze. He’d never seen her angry and now she was furious. “Why do you think I’m so careful? Do you think a radical omega would get chosen to the senate? What about the supreme court?” 

“What? You want to—” 

“I want to have _the choice_ , Keenan," she interrupted him. And it was the first time she'd ever done that. He didn't want to notice things like that, but every fibre of his being tensed at the unspoken challenge. Amalia either didn't notice or didn't care. "The same choice you keep talking about, I need to work for it. Work twice as hard as any alpha or beta to prove I’m capable. And then, after I have a goddamned life, maybe I can afford to help others!" 

“Okay, I see that. I just want to help. I can help now, I have that much already.” 

“Yes, you do, and if you mean it..." She shook her head. "Well, you’d better find a better speech writer, you can’t waste your words on petty arguments.” 

“So we are okay?” 

She nodded, but she still looked sad. “I’m proud of you. I... You made me feel like it was okay to be myself with you and that’s not something I’ve had before, not with an alpha. So it was always mind blowing sex or...”  She shook her head. “But now I’m proud of you. It’s not what I wanted. I wanted a happy place to come back to," she admitted, glancing away. "But you’re not a place.”  

“I want to be," he said in small voice. "For you. I want you to come back to me when you need me.”  

Amalia met his eyes again, with obvious effort. He couldn't tell if it was because of the pain on her face, or because he was an alpha. It hurt not to know, but he couldn't ask. She probably couldn't tell him if he did. “I want that too, but you can’t be.” 

“Why not? Just because I spoke for omega rights...” He trailed off, closing his fists against the urge to reach out for her. He couldn't help but feel that if only he could have let himself touch her, he would be able to fix this. But he couldn't let himself because maybe it was true. Maybe if their skin touched, he'd bring out everything that made them great together. And he would have her. But it wouldn’t be her choice.  

It felt wrong and if she’d been a beta, he’d at least been able to try to hold her hand. But not with Amalia. With her, he would always have to be careful, it’d always be hard. He had to have limits because he had power. Power he shouldn’t have had—no matter how naturally it had come about. Just like he shouldn’t have been able to use his physical strength to overwhelm someone. But at least with that, he’d have known. They would have known, and she could have left. An omega under an alpha's thrall wouldn’t have been able to pull away.  

“Keenan,” she said almost tenderly. “You are not going to stop.” 

“I could stop.” He wasn't sure he could but he wanted to try... It'd hurt, just like not touching her did. 

She sighed. “You could, but you don’t want to. And I can’t ask you to.” 

“Of course you can ask me to!” he said at once. She could ask him for anything. Wasn't that what he'd said? Alphas were meant to give their omegas anything they needed—if only they asked. 

“But I won’t. You’re not a happy place for me to return to,” she said and he was about to object when she met his eyes and added. “Just like you wouldn’t want me to be one for you.” 

He closed his mouth, the feeling of dread he had had in his gut since the interview solidifying into something worse. Something certain. 

For a moment he still thought about asking again, about maybe pointing out what a role reversal it’d be. But he didn’t do it. She was proud of him and he understood what she wasn’t saying, too. Before he’d made her happy, but now he had made her love him.  

He wanted, no, needed, to deserve that love. More than he needed it to last forever. He took a step closer. “Can I... Just to...” 

She didn’t wait for him to ask, or to agree, just pushed away from the wall and took hold of his face to kiss him fiercely, almost angrily. He kissed her back, poured all the emotions rushing through his head into it, like he could show her, like he could give it back. But it wasn’t possible: it didn’t matter if it was over now, what they brought out in each other couldn’t be erased.  

Amalia pulled on his hair. “I want you," she whispered like it was being dragged out of her. “Just the once, just...” 

And he was already pressing closer, all the answer he could articulate, kissing her hard enough their teeth clicked. 

Because she was his. He knew it was wrong, but it didn’t feel wrong; it felt like the truth he couldn’t hold back, not now, not when he was losing her. Forever. He’d never... She pulled hard enough that several of his shirt buttons went flying and he was only sorry it wasn’t all of them. 

Her skirt—and how he never noticed how daring business skirts were for an omega—was easy to push up to her waist. But she didn’t let him put his mouth on her wet panties, arching and shoving them down her legs until they dangled from one of her shoes.  

“Trousers,” she said and he didn’t quite remember much until the moment when he sank into her, warm and wet and eager for him. 

“Amalia,” he begged when she tried to make him move. 

She gave him a second, and then they were kissing again, in sync and moving together, and it wasn’t until she choked back a sob that he noticed that her face was wet with his tears. “It'll be okay,” she promised. “Keenan, love, it will be okay.” 

And he didn’t know if he believed her, but he refused to let it ruin this. In this moment, they were together, bodies locked, tongues entwining and it could have been the last moment in the universe for all he knew. He fucked harder into her, just like she liked and her throat clicked with a very different sound. 

She trembled and shook, eyes closing as her body was wrecked with pleasure and he let go. She held him to her, sweaty and warm and smelling of him. And he let himself have it, a moment only but too precious to squander with doubt or fear.  

He stayed in her arms until she fell asleep, and only then made his limbs disentangle from hers. He didn’t look back at the bed. He couldn’t say goodbye again; he couldn’t fight his instincts as well as his heart. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just re-read this and I'm kinda shipping Keenan/Amalia atm. We will see...
> 
> Btw, if you want a M/M/M novella: https://www.instafreebie.com/free/mJCie


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This the second time I revise/edit the story and I have finally managed to get past that goddamned scene! I should probably wait before sharing but here's the first bit because I'm too happy not to.
> 
> Also, anybody fancy a review copy of "The Mating Habits of Werewolves"? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26516646-the-mating-habits-of-werewolves  
> I'm relaunching with a new cover and reviews on Amazon would be particularly helpful/but GR/wherever you squee about books even if it's not public is totally cool too (not that you have to squee, it's an honest review if you can/want kind of deal :)

##  & Cartwright

 

Keenan had shown up closed tight, not a wisp of his feelings perceptible even to Carry's half formed morning mental shields. Carry wasn't about to complain, but it'd made him look at Keenan's face to see if he could figure out what he was feeling. It turned out he didn't need the bond because his teammate looked like shit warmed up.

His stomach twisted. He should have watched the speech—not live, he wasn’t that stupid, but afterwards. Keenan was his linemate; he deserved Carry’s support and Carry couldn’t support him without knowing what he’d said and how the press had reacted.

But even though they had been winning for a while, it’d taken them too long to get their shit together at the beginning of their season so their point average wasn’t as good as it needed to be. To advance to the cup finals, points mattered more than victories, and in three days, they’d play the [TITANS again. Carry couldn’t afford the distraction. Hell, Keenan couldn’t afford Carry to be distracted. They’d promised hockey would come first. Still, Keenan obviously needed help getting his head in the game… He wasn’t just closed up tight, he also hadn’t looked Carry in the face all morning.

Watching the interview would have been a start, but what he actually needed to do was call one of the PR people and get a proper update. They would probably believe it if he told them he needed to know how he himself should react.

Probably not how he wanted. It was never the truth people wanted to see, was it? Especially not from an omega.

Keenan didn't open up during warm-up, and then he didn't open up during drills, but Carry kept hoping. He wasn't sure if he wanted to be able to predict Keenan's play or... to know for certain that he was okay. He was at practice, which since he had been at practices all week long, he could have actually skipped without consequences. And he wasn't skating particularly poorly either, as far as Carry could see from the outside. That should have been enough to set a teammate's mind at ease.

It wasn't Carry's job to worry about Keenan's peace of mind or happiness. But of course he did anyway. He didn’t know what to call what they were to each other, but it mattered. It mattered most in the ice, because everything did. But it mattered outside it, too. Seeing Keenan’s tense shoulders and abrupt movements made Carry’s fingers twitch. It was normal, Keenan had shared too much of himself for Carry not to care.

To make matters worse, _Thomas_ hadn’t shown up this morning.

At least he was smart enough to take a break when he needed it. Carry hoped he was taking the chance to sort things out with his alpha boyfriend.

They didn't play together during practice, instead Carry spent it trying to get Patel to catch on to his own subtle signals so they could play together at a professional speed. The guy was big and strong enough to make up for it, and he played fine with Bauer on his left, but it felt like a pickup game with a stranger.

He wondered if he would ever be able to play with a different line without feeling the lack. It wasn't reasonable to expect Thomas and Keenan to be around for the rest of his career. He knew that...

After practice, when Binker stepped in front of him, he was till debating whether to approach Keenan.

He tensed, unable to control the instinctive reaction, but his captain didn't step back, just stood still and kept watching him. It was almost a challenge. “A word, please?”

Carry nodded, and pointed to his locker. “I'll wait for you outside,” Sven said and walked out of the changing room without making time for his usual amiable teasing.

Carry hurried through his changing, mind racing with questions. But he couldn't come up with anything even remotely problematic he'd done. He was even fairly open psychically since he'd been hoping it'd signal to Keenan he was interested in talking... He shoved his pads into the locker and dropped his sweaty clothes into the huge basket by the door. The team probably had a special water permit to wash all their clothes. Unless it was sonic washing, but his mother always said the sonic machines never really got the smells out and if the way the changing room stank after practice was anything to go by...

Binker was waiting for him right outside, still and serious even as Bauer and Patel joked right besides him.

“Captain?” Carry asked, trying for friendly.

Binker’s eyes didn’t waver, but he nodded and tilted his head. “I got the keys to an office.”

He didn’t explain further and Carry didn’t ask. Binker walked them into the area where they had team meetings with management but the office they walked in was smaller than any Carry had seen so far. The coffee maker on the side table looked expensive but Binker went right to the fridge and retrieved two volcanic water bottles.

He placed them on the table. “Sit.”

And that was all it took, Carry’s legs almost folded before he had time to pull a chair back. He didn't even have time to glare before Binker pushed one of the bottles at him.

“Did you know he was going to do it?”

Carry blinked at him, then realised that of course Binker meant Keenan. “The conference? Yes, he told me.”

“He told _you_?” Binker didn't bother masking his disbelief—not that he ever bothered to repress any of his emotions. Carry normally didn't mind—the guy was exceptionally laid-back—but he was not enjoying a front-row seat to Sven's internal as well as external freak-out.

He kept his own voice low and even, refusing to let the alpha's emotions pull at his own. “You mean because he didn't tell you?”

“Yes, also because I think it's pretty clear you told _him_.”

Carry blinked, thrown. “What?”

“Where else would he get these radical ideas? Amalia certainly hasn't been talking to him about omega rights. She was worried about what it would mean for his career, she talked to Helga about it.”

“Helga... Oh, your bondmate.”

“Yes, my bondmate, who I love and who loves me, and who I am not oppressing.”

Carry stared. “Okay? Why would I think otherwise?”

“Did you not watch Keenan's speech from last night?”

“Not yet,” Carry admitted. He'd had one of the scheduled teleconferences his parents had made him promise to do with them. It was that, visit during the season, or listen to them bug him about it endlessly. And he hadn't wanted to. Because even though Keenan had snapped at that reporter without any prompting... He hadn't been sure he wouldn't take it back. He'd been so worried about what people would think, what his girlfriend would say... Carry knew he didn't have the right to expect anything. And yet...

He'd hoped Keenan had gone with his principles, but he couldn't risk being disappointed late at night when he had to go and see him the next day. Hockey had to come first, and he had to qualify for the final with the man. It'd been a stupid idea. Keenan had obviously done the right thing. A conciliatory speech wouldn't have pissed their captain this much.

“You haven't?”

“No,” Carry confirmed. “And obviously I should have because it sounds like something he needs to be congratulated about, but I have other things to do besides follow his press.”

"Look, I understand that things are hard for omegas and—"

But Carry didn't have time to listen to alpha bullshit. “I don't think you do, if you think omega rights are about calling all alphas abusers,” Carry said, doing his best to keep his voice even. To think he'd thought Binker was alright.

“So it was you,” Binker concluded at once. Because that was the point: who'd got his buddy in trouble, not what Keenan had actually _said,_ what Keenan actually _believed._

“I wouldn't know,” Carry said, taking a sip of his water with all the coldness he'd learned to exude as a child who was not allowed to openly disagree with guests. “But he did mention he had come to realise omegas were not treated fairly. If it was anything I said, I'm glad.”

“Even if it gets him kicked out of the team?”

Carry snorted. “An alpha kicked off a team for morality clauses?” he asked incredulously. “What world do you live in? He'd have to actually commit a criminal offence, and then he might only get _suspended_ like Higog did when he caused that car pile up in Poland.”

With him not even bothering not to project, the understanding clearing Binker's expression was easy to interpret. There was pity in it, and Carry wanted to hit him. He didn't want anybody to be sorry for him, he wanted justice. But he couldn't keep the alpha from speaking, “You weren't traded, they—”

“Yes,” he interrupted, it was painful but the satisfaction of breaking protocol made it worth the discomfort.

“That's... that's bad, of course,” the captain agreed and Carry almost rolled his eyes at him. “But Keenan still needs to think of his career; he can't become a spokesperson for omega rights and let everything he's been working towards go to hell.”

“I think you will find he can do whatever he wants, since he _isn't_ an omega.”

Binker paused, then asked, “Do you care about him?”

“What?”

“Do you care what happens to him?" Binker insisted. "Or is he just a random alpha you play well with?”

Carry swallowed, but whatever he thought of his politics, he could respect his loyalty. “I do. And he's not someone I play well with; he's the best linemate I have ever had.”

“So you didn't tell him to do this?” He was staring intently at Carry, as if he could make him drop his shields that way. Carry could feel it, and maybe a different omega would have been tempted to give into the desire to please an alpha, or at least not to piss him off. But he wasn't another omega: he lived to piss alphas off.

“Stop that,” he gritted out, clenching his hands and meeting his captain's eyes in open defiance.

Binker jumped, and suddenly the pressure was gone. “Fuck, I didn't... I didn't mean to...”

Carry exhaled. “See the shit I have to put up with? And I _still_ didn't manipulate your mate into speaking up for me.”

Binker swallowed, but didn't apologize again. “Why did he tell you, then?”

“I don't know, because he thought I would get it?" he asked, annoyed. He might not have been Keenan's best friend but it wasn't like he was a complete stranger. "Because he actually cares about what I want and he knew people would look at me if he started to talk about omega rights?”

“He asked for your permission,” Binker said slowly.

“Yes," Carry said, realising it was true. "He asked. That's kinda the point, you _ask_ people what they want and you don't make them want something different, you don't push them until they become whatever you need them to be."

“That's not what being an alpha is about,” Binker gritted out.

“No?” He waved between them. “You could have fooled me.”

“That was an accident, you can't judge me for a simple slip—”

“I can judge you for whatever I want, and anybody would judge you for trying to use your will to change someone else's and not _even noticing_.”

“It's never happened before,” he explained, voice low, posture losing its rigidity.

“That you know of,” Carry remarked, teeth clenched against the burning rage that was suddenly filling him up. “Maybe you should ask someone who might know. _Like Helga,_ ” he added sourly.

His captain flinched but didn't object. Carry took the chance to get to his feet. He was done with this. “I thought you wanted to talk about why he looked so down today, but if you just want to yell at me for being a bad omega, you can get in line.”


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Carry's POV, not sure why, I told my brain not to play favourites!
> 
> Enjoy! :p

 

&

 

 _Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._ If he'd messed up with his place on the team... Would Binker try and get him traded? He was captain and his word would be taken seriously by management. They probably wouldn't go for it the way Carry's line was scoring, but winning streaks were never endless and even players who won their teams cups got sent away.

He should apologize, pretend, even open up and let his fear convince Sven to be merciful. He'd hated the pity when he'd got it, but it was better than resentment. No, not better. If it had been only a feeling, Carry would have infinitely preferred to be hated than to be pitied. But safer, it was safer.

Alphas were as much creatures of instinct as omegas and a sincerely contrite omega would make their protectiveness flare up.

The idea alone make him feel sick to his stomach. He'd used alphas' instincts against them pretty much since he'd presented, just like they had used his. But he'd never had a choice.

He'd never thought he did, at least.

Until now. Now it seemed an impossible choice to make. He picked up his phone and called Thomas instead, huddling under a bus stop against the drizzle that had hit London that morning and seemed unwilling to abate.

“Why did you miss practice?” he asked as soon as his friend picked up.

“Um, hello to you too.”

“Yeah, sure, hello, but you aren't sick again?”

Thomas sighed, annoyed. “You know why, I told you.”

“So you talked to him?”

“What? No, I stayed home and watched dramas about what happens when betas and alphas try to defy the laws of nature.”

“Why?” he asked. He was no stranger to self-pity but he preferred some quality in his fiction. “I recommended like five shows to you. _Spinning_ has hockey in it!”

“Wait,” Thomas said. “Why are you calling me? Is Keenan okay? Is it about the speech? Is he getting traded?”

“What? _Traded_? What the hell did he say in that speech of his?”

“You didn't watch it? It's all over the feeds!”

“You know what? You show up for afternoon skate to keep an eye on him. I'll go watch the damn speech.”

“But—”

“I need your help, Thomas, I can't leave him alone. He looked like crap this morning, but...” He sighed and admitted, “Binker just pulled me aside for a third degree because he thought I'd put Keenan up to it.”

He expected Thomas to be a surprised as he had been, but the beta was silent for a long minute before he spoke, “Don’t be offended, okay? But I don't think we can say Keenan's speech has nothing to do with you.”

“I... Okay, yes, I know it has something to do with me. But I didn't ask him to do it.”

“Was that what Sven said?”

“Yes. He said Keenan had never said anything before and his girlfriend was worried it’d affect his career so it obviously couldn't be her...” He stopped, realising how fast he was speaking. “I don't really want to see him again today.”

“Fuck, you are such a puppy. Okay, I'll babysit Keenan for you.”

“Thank you, I'll owe you one.”

“You owe me so many, boy, I’m not even counting!” Thomas replied, but Carry could hear the softness in his tone. He was right, of course, and Carry intended to get to the bottom of his boyfriend issues somehow—or get someone who knew anything about relationships to do it for him, more like.

 

&

 

Keenan had mentioned hockey, and of course the reporters had gone right for Carry's name.

Just like Binker had. Just like everyone would. Because only hysterical omegas complained about being treated like second class citizens.

It was a hell of a catch-22: let them walk all over you or be labelled a crazy radical omega. Except that even if you were quiet and played the game and did your job right and never complained, they would still assume. Maybe because they fucking _knew_ how wrong it was, how much you struggled, how much it hurt to have that struggle ignored and minimised; and they didn't really expect you to take it quietly even as they demanded that you do and insisted that any injustice had been handed down to you by your own body.

And Carry had _let_ them. He'd believed their bullshit excuses and accepted their rules even though it meant he was playing a game so rigged he wouldn't have bet a single pound on his own chances.

Somehow, maybe because of all the body armour or the advantage his speed gave him on the ice, he'd convinced himself he could free when he had a stick in his hands.

It’s been a comforting lie, but he should have realised that was all it was when the Titans had sent him away.

He pressed 'play' again and watched Keenan's face as he told the truth. He was spellbinding, sweaty dark hair sticking up, cheeks a little flushed as that alpha reporter baited him again and again, and his eyes bright and passionate. He'd never seen that look on his teammate's face off the ice. But it couldn't be new—it was too raw, too honest, to be anything but something Keenan believed deeply.

And even if it wasn't as dangerous for him, he was still facing people who'd judge him for it. He was standing up and drawing their fire and they weren't pulling their punches just because they normally liked him.

It was hard to watch because by now Carry knew Keenan too well not too see those shots landing, or the cost of each question. It was also hard because he could hear his own words here and there, just the easiest way Keenan thought to explain some of the most basic concepts a group of educated professionals either didn't understand or didn't believe.

It wasn't untrue that Carry had probably sparked this. They just didn't understand that it wasn't manipulation or brainwashing: it was a conversation. The real kind that happened so rarely. But Keenan had been listening, and now Carry was. He could hear the truth, just like Keenan had heard it from him.

He'd never really thought about how the whole thing affected alphas before but he remembered realising he'd been treating one of the cleaners who worked at his house like they were little more than an appliance. The woman had waved his stilted apology away like it was nothing. But it’d only made Carry feel worse because it meant that to her, it was normal.

He'd spoken up, when he had had the power. He'd told his sister off when she'd interrupted her conversation with an event planner to greet him without even excusing herself. And even if his mother thanked her drivers like they were voice activated, Carry made sure to look them in the face himself.

He didn't kid himself that he'd changed much, but he'd do it anyway. It was right and he could afford to. He hoped it felt even a little better for them to know they had someone on their side, but that wasn't why he’d done it. Once he'd known, he'd needed to _be_ on the right side. He remembered the twisting guilt he had just watched playing on Keenan's face when he'd admitted he'd been wrong about the situation of omegas.

And maybe Keenan wasn’t speaking to Carry. Or for him. But he deserved an answer. And Carry deserved better, much better than he’d been told. Much better than he’d ended up believing.

He wasn’t going to lose hockey over this. He didn’t have to. But he wasn’t going to give up on everything else he wanted either. He was tired of being afraid, and lonely, and so careful he often felt like double checking he was still breathing.

He couldn't give a speech, he wasn't planning on throwing all caution to the wind. But he wasn't going to stand aside and watch Keenan do all the work either.

He got the list of team contact numbers from the folder he'd been handed the first day and never looked at again. He was bad with names but there were only two PR people players were meant to contact directly and only one of them had gone for the old-fashioned gender-neutral pronoun. It was still a guess that Jay Kalho was the short-handed middle aged beta who'd escorted Keenan out of the reception room for his press conference. But really, he could only get it wrong once.

He exhaled, pulling on every speech and diction lesson he'd ever been forced to attend as a child. “Hello, this is Cartwright Johnson.”

“Ah,” He could have sworn the voice at the other end sounded pleased. “Mr Johnson, I was hoping you'd call.”

At least he'd got the right person. “Good,” he agreed business-like, as if he was glad they were on the same page instead of calling to ask what _book_ they were on. “I just watched the interview. Should I be concerned for my line?”

Kalho's hesitation was almost too much for Carry to bear in silence. “Not as such, no. But I can tell you some people have raised... concerns.”

“Such as?”

“Such as whether putting you and Avali on the same line was wise.”

“What?” the word was out of Carry’s mouth, too sharp and raw by half. “I mean—”

“No,” Kalho interrupted. “Your coach reacted much more strongly, I assure you.”

Carry forced himself to relax his hold on the phone. “Good.”

“Correct me if I’m mistaken... but he will not be dropping this, will he?”

He hesitated. “You should ask him that, but... I don't think so.”

“I see.” He couldn't tell whether they approved or not.

“And I would like to support him,” he said anyway.

“Not with an interview,” Khalo said at once. It wasn't a question.

“No,” Carry agreed. “I want to help, not distract everybody from what he is saying.”

“Very wise. May I suggest a different strategy then?”

“Yes, of course, I trust your judgement,” Carry lied. It was no reflection on Khalo; he didn’t trust anyone’s judgement—often not even his own. But he knew the way to make up for your own deficits was to listen to as many opinions as you could manage: nobody needed to be right, even being wrong would be an indicator of the likely reactions he could expect and should prepare for.

“You should personally stay out of this matter, of course,” Khalo continued. “But that is not the case for other… interested parties in the league. If you wished to bring the matter to their attention, it’d help diffuse the tension without minimizing the issue itself.”

Carry frowned. He thought Khalo must mean omegas, because it’d be easier for Carry to approach them with this than for anybody else. But if the attention was on Keenan, he thought it made more sense to get other _alphas_ to speak up. But he couldn't trust a stranger with that much, even if the stranger appeared to be on his side.

“I will see what I can do,” he said. “Thank you for your advice. I’d appreciate a heads up if the situation with Avali becomes an issue.”

“If it does, it’ll be because I’m not doing my job properly,” Khalo replied, their tone implied the likelihood of this coming to pass wasn’t high.

 

&

 

Carry only realised how lost he’d been in his own thoughts when he opened the door to the delivery beta and his voice seemed to echo inside his own head as he thanked them for the food.

The plate wasn’t necessary but some things his mother had drilled into his head were too much of a hassle to fight. He felt redeemed by placing his phone next to his plate so he could text as he ate—a breach in etiquette so unpardonable he’d have been sent to bed without dinner for sure.

He selected Keenan’s name first. [Watched your speech. Colour me impressed.]

He popped a chip into his mouth as he waited, but nothing came. Was Keenan having dinner with someone and couldn’t answer his phone? Hades, he should hope he was with the way he’d looked that morning. He certainly needed cheering up.

He opened Thomas’ profile next. [Hey. Thanks for this afternoon.]

[??]

Carry’s stomach fell. He dropped his fork and pressed the call button.

Thomas was already laughing when he picked up.

“You _tosser,_ ” Carry said with feeling. “You knew I was worried!”

His linemate was unrepentant. “Yeah, well, you could just call me like a normal person instead of making me break my fingers texting you a report.”

“Whatever,” Carry huffed. “Was Keenan okay?”

“ _Keenan_ was fine,” Thomas said. “Coach put Bauer in with us for drills.”

Carry couldn’t keep himself from tensing up at yet another reminder of management’s objections. And their power to screw up their game. “Mmm?”

“Yeah, it was not impressive,” Thomas confirmed. “Say, since when do you call him Keenan?”

“What?” Carry asked, surprised. “I don’t know. Since he asked me to? I call you by your given name,” he added unnecessarily, then stuffed another chip into his mouth.

“You have always called me by name, though, and so has everyone who isn’t giving me detention for being late to lessons. None of you can even _say_ my surname.”

“What?” Carry echoed. “Of course I can say your surname. You just said you didn’t like it, so I didn’t.”

“You can?” Thomas asked doubtfully.

“Thomas, I specialized in languages in school. I can say _Kiau._ ”

“Hades! You are full of surprises,” his friend laughed. “But don’t think you have distracted me from the point. When did you and Keenan become so close? You guys couldn’t even talk to each other a few months ago.”

Carry put more food into his mouth and hummed, but Thomas waited him out and in the end he was forced to speak, “You know how it is: you play together, travel together… It adds up.”

He didn’t mention the bond. Thomas was a beta and didn’t have any psychic ability to either project his own or perceive other people’s mental presence, but even betas watched TV. If he thought it through, he’d have to see what both Carry and Keenan had so dutifully ignored: what they did on the ice was nothing but a different flavour than the romantic bonds alphas and omegas were capable of forming with each other.

“And that’s it? I don’t see you calling _Keenan_ to get him to check on me.”

Except he _had_. Keenan must have forgotten and while he should have been annoyed, right now, Carry could only be grateful for a distraction that was guaranteed to work. “Actually… I did. I hope it’s okay. I told him you were worried about your relationship working long-term.”

He could almost hear Thomas’ good mood evaporate. “He called me.”

“Oh, I thought maybe he forgot—” He stopped. “You don’t sound happy? I asked and he said it could work, didn’t he tell you?”

“He said it could work if the alpha had never shared a heat with an omega,” Thomas answered. “Uri is… Well, he’s successful and insanely hot. And thirty-four.”

“Thomas, come on, you can’t be this naïve: he’d have to be Elan Jared for you to be worried. And I mean a famous movie star as well as scorchingly hot. Believe me when I tell you very few omegas feel a fuck it’s worth becoming a social pariah.”

“That’s only if someone finds out.”

“Well, the way they tell it to you in health class: someone always will. I’m not saying it never happens, but most omegas figure betas are good enough until they meet their one and only. It’s just… easier.”

“Doesn’t sound like a great deal for you,” Thomas pointed out quietly.

Carry swallowed the words that wanted to get out. Thomas was his friend; he’d have understood. But the lesson had been taught too harshly and too recently. “Well, it’s not like you are having the greatest time yourself, right? It can suck for anyone. But if you talk things over…”

Thomas huffed. “You are being too sensible. I wanted to whine and you are giving me actual solutions to my problems. If I wanted to act like an adult and talk things through with him, I’d hardly need advise!”

Carry froze. Thomas sounded serious now, but knowing him… “Joke, Carry,” his friend clarified, reading his silence somehow.

To Carry, it seemed like a much stranger ability than being able to see through Keenan’s eyes. “Ha ha,” he said dryly. “My dinner’s cold already. I’m hanging up. Grow up and talk to your boyfriend.”

“Whatever, dad,” Thomas shot back. Carry almost choked on his sip of tea so it was fortunate he also chose to hang up afterwards.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it might sound a little conceited but you are going to like this one ;p

##  & Keenan

 

He looked down at his phone, almost wondering if he was hallucinating. It was more enthusiasm than he'd got from Carry for some goals, and it had nothing to do with hockey.

He hadn't done it for Carry. Not really. Not even for Amalia. It’d helped to have his support, but he had never expected anything more than Carry’s unwavering certainty that Keenan had to what he believed was right.

It shouldn't have felt this good. Especially not when Amalia had told him she was proud of him and promptly broken both their hearts. But he didn't want to be admired: he wanted to be understood. And Amalia... she couldn't see that he had a chance here, that his words and actions could change things. Not the law written down and certified that people could use when the world stomped on them, but the people who would have done the stomping. Not all of them, not even most, but some. It was important, maybe the most important thing he'd ever set out to do.

He could very well fail, but he needed someone to understand why he had to try—understand, not just admire the sentiment behind his actions.

[Thanks] he sent and promptly felt like an asshole. He wanted to seize Carry and squeeze him, shake him hard and maybe apologize for the fact that he’d had to talk about him to reporters—albeit in passing. He wanted... He wanted Carry’s hopeful scent, sweet but creamy, like he was afraid to let himself feel anything too good. He wanted to tell him that he could feel it, that it would last, that Keenan was going to keep pushing until nobody dared take anything from him again when he'd earned it with sweat and blood.

But it wasn't a promise he could make. He couldn't be sure any of this would work, not even a little. And it wasn't his place. Carry didn't want it to be. Maybe, Keenan thought, he didn't want it to be anybody's place to protect him. He just wanted to be safe—or as safe as anyone else ever was.

It wasn't too much to ask, whatever the world claimed.

He read his teammate's words again, let them warmth him. He had known he'd done the right thing, he didn't need anybody to tell him, but even so... It felt good to be told.

 

&

 

For the most part, they'd discontinued their private training, but the Titans had somehow managed to defeat the Waves. It was only one game, but with enough points it meant unless both the Dragons and the Foxes.

They didn’t discuss it. Thomas knew Carry hadn’t deal well with facing his old teammates, but that was all, and Carry hadn’t really told Keenan anything about it. Keenan wasn’t about to risk upsetting their delicate balance by prying into Carry’s past. He didn’t really have any questions; it was quite obvious Carry had got massively screwed over by his last team—so badly he’d taken months and a psychic bond to warm up to the Flames.

“You seem happier,” he told Thomas as they settled for a break before going back on the ice.

Thomas shrugged and Keenan thought he might have been blushing. “Yeah, well, turns out using your words works. Who knew?”

“You spoke to him,” Carry declared from Keenan's right. He was actually smiling. He also seemed happier lately, more... relaxed. Keenan didn't know why he was surprised, his left winger always reacted in ways Keenan couldn't predict.

He dragged his eyes back to Thomas. “So it's all good between you.”

“Well, let's say he's no Elan Jared, so...”

“He’s not who?”

Carry laughed, then explained, “He hasn't been with an omega.”

“Oh,” Keenan nodded, neck straining as he didn't look at Carry. “Good.”

“I don't know if I believe all the hype, Uri says compatible omegas mostly freak him out. It's like... super intense out of nowhere?” His eyes slid over to Carry. “Is that how it is for omegas too?”

“It’s pretty weird... You might hate the guy and then, boom, you get close enough and you want to climb him like a tree.”

“Guy? Are you a mono too?” Thomas asked.

“Um, no,” Carry said quickly. “I was just generalising. I mean, I don't like many people anyway. But I don’t care about that.”

Keenan went to the table and topped off his orange juice—keenly aware Carry was speaking about him. About being forced to like him by an accident of genetics. It shouldn't have hurt, he'd known that was all it was.

At least he was pretty sure Carry didn't hate him anymore.

“So is heat sex really that awesome?” Thomas asked and Keenan heard Carry inhale and his heart almost stopped.

But Carry stopped short. “Heat is awful,” he said calmly. It was the same tone he used when he spoke to coach or reporters, dutiful and deferential.

“Oh, Keenan said—”

“Thomas, just let it go,” Keenan asked. “Let’s get back to the ice.”

 

&

                                                                                                              

Maybe it wasn't surprising they were out of sorts after that conversation, but of course Carry wasn't willing to accept it and just turn down the dial. He kept himself open enough that Keenan could get the minutest shifts of his skates if he concentrated. They'd practiced enough with less information that it wasn't even disorientating anymore. But level 8 did mean Carry’s emotions bled through. As much as he pretended to be wholly in the game, he couldn't rid himself completely of a hint of fear. Keenan could ignore the bitterness for a while if he kept his own mind down to a level 4, but after he fumbled a pass because Carry only had a general idea of where he was, his teammate stopped the play.

“I need more from you,” he told Keenan, not quite angry but a little on edge.

Thomas stopped between them, probably wondering why they'd stopped.

Keenan shook his head. “You are too... wound up. I don't want to get pulled into—"

Thomas gasped and Keenan turned to look at him.

He looked between them with wide eyes. “Oh my god, you are using a _bond_. The same bond people get _married_ over?”

Carry’s alarm shot up in flames, making Keenan scrunch his nose like he could avoid the scent that way.

Thankfully, Keenan had already been prepared for a difficult conversation. In all honesty, it was easier to calm down Thomas than Carry. Even with the soundtrack of Carry's frantic and half-muffled panicked thoughts.

“So are you and I,” Keenan said calmly. “People get married because they are friends all the time, don’t they? Or they don’t, there’s different ways to act on the same emotions.”

“But that means you are attracted to each other,” Thomas insisted. “You are compatible, that's why... How… How compatible?”

That almost threw Keenan for a loop, but Carry had rallied. He sounded cold, but he felt so far from it Keenan had to suppress the impulse to put some space between them. “Thomas,” he said in a soft raspy voice that went right down Keenan's spine. “I would totally suck your dick if you weren’t my teammate.”

Thomas straightened, staring at Carry's bored expression in shock. “See? It doesn’t mean anything.” Carry smiled again. “Attraction is not the end all. You can be attracted to someone and be their friend, or hate their guts, or whatever.”

Thomas glanced back at Keenan, looking understandably wary. “Okay, you know what? I think maybe I’ll let you practise with the…” He waved a hand between them, obviously worried the word ‘bond’ would offend them. “I’m going to go have a shower and call Uri.”

Carry gave him that same terrifyingly sweet fake smile. “Atta, boy.”

Keenan couldn’t quite keep back his laugher as their linemate made a beeline for the changing room and left them alone.

“Sorry,” Carry said, looking away. He was slumped and dialling down the bond to nothing. Keenan would have bet his pulse was out of control. “I think he got the wrong idea. It’s because I asked him to check on you the other day. Right after that press conference when you were so down…”

Keenan's stomach twisted. He'd known Carry was worried; he'd felt his tentative touch through the bond and he'd definitely seen the looks. But he'd needed the break. He'd wanted to play in the silence of this own head, only the ice and him in the world so he didn't have think. It'd been selfish: he'd told Carry once that he wasn't the only one with instincts and he'd ignored that Carry would need to know he was okay too.

“Oh, no, it’s… I’m sorry I worried you. It wasn’t because of the press conference. I mean, I was a little worried but mostly… Well, Amalia and I broke up. Well, not really, she broke up with me.”

Carry was closed up tight now, but Keenan felt his pause anyway. “She broke up with you?”

Fuck. Should he not have said it? A couple months back Carry had lied to him about his relationship status to help them both keep things professional. Would he have preferred not to know? He hadn't meant anything by it, of course. He just hadn’t told anyone and now it had come out.

“It… she couldn’t afford to be in the spotlight,” he explained, propping his stick against the side of the rink. It wouldn’t stay but it was a reason to look away. “It wasn’t fair to ask her. This is her fight more than its mine and she’s been working on it for a long time. I don’t have to right to ask her to sacrifice her career for me.”

“So she is in favour of omega rights,” Carry said slowly. “But she dumped you when you joined her in the trenches?”

Keenan glanced back. Carry was closed but he sounded... Angry? Upset?

“It wasn’t like that,” he said. He hoped his honesty was visible on his own face because he couldn’t have opened up his mind for all the goals in the league. “She supported me, that’s why she let me go.”

“She supported you,” Carry repeated. Keenan glanced down at his gloved hands clenched around his stick. “But she doesn’t want to be with you if you are going ahead with it?”

“She’s… She’s trying to change things her way. And it’s not the same for me. I can’t really say I’m in the trenches, not when I can walk away any time. More, I don’t know, air support or whatever.”

Carry stared at him. “Maybe you should watch your own interview,” he suggested. “Have a look at your face and tell yourself you aren’t in this fight.”

“Are you angry at her for dumping me?” Keenan asked, confused.

Carry’s expression cleared like he’d been wiped clean. It was almost as bad as feeling him close his mind. “It’s none of my business, anyway.”

Keenan couldn’t really object to that, could he? “Well, I’m glad that you are on board with this. Thank you for—”

“No,” Carry cut in. “I didn’t thank you, did I? So don’t thank me. This has always been my fight. I just… I guess you made me realise I couldn’t keep pretending everything was fine. I could thank you for that.” He raised his eyes as he offered and Keenan’s heart skipped a beat.

“Same,” he managed after a moment.

Carry nodded like they’d decided something, and apparently he had because when Keenan checked his phone on the way home he found a text asking him for the number of the activists that had contacted him. He was almost glad to be able to say he didn’t have it: what on earth did Carry think he was doing?

 

&

 

Naturally the universe rewarded him for that with a call from the very people he’d been hoping to avoid the very next morning. He was still groggy and uncaffeinated when the same female alpha chirped a greeting. “I have to say,” she added, “you surprised me. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Keenan growled at her—she was being rude and he was too tired to care about protocol.

“Oh, come off it, I’m just not used to alphas noticing, much less being willing to step up when they do. It’s a compliment, seriously.”

“What do you want then?” He pushed the button on the coffeemaker and watched as it started rumbling. It was top of the line but it’d still need a few minutes to provide him with any relief.

“Well, I know you are on a roll and all that, but it’d actually be better if you laid low for a bit.”

“What? You told me to—”

“I know, I know,” she interrupted without seeming to notice, and she sounded so different than last time than it made him wonder if he’d got it wrong and she was a different person. “But I thought you needed the push. Now it’s different, I think a little more and you’re gonna go right over the edge.”

“Fine, whatever. What about when they ask me about it?”

“You should tell them that you have explained your views but you need to focus on hockey now that you’ve got the finals? Semi-finals?”

“But won’t they think I’m backing off?”

“Can’t control what they think,” she said. “But they won’t forget about it, don’t worry. We have someone else who will take the heat off you for a bit.”

“What? You do? Who is it?”

“Ah, well, that would be telling,” she said too cheerily. It was too early to be this happy, even if she had got an alpha in the public eye to speak for omega rights and had another one lined up. “You’ll find out soon enough, it’ll be a nice surprise, I think.”

He eyed the coffeemaker and saw there were about two centimetres of dark liquid on so he got two cups: one to pour it into and the other to put under the drip. He blew on the coffee, trying to distract himself from her irritating chirpiness. She’d made him feel guilty as hell the first time they’d talked, and now…

“I need your number,” he said, remembering Carry’s request. There was no way he could keep this from him and it was definitely safer for them to tell him to keep quiet for now than for him to go half-cocked on his own because Keenan had inspired him. He took the first sip and closed his eyes, he’d forgotten the sugar, he realised with a grimace. He’d always liked it black before but he was up to two spoons per cup now. His goddamned brain’s interpretation of Carry’s pheromones had fucked with his sense of taste.

“My number?”

“Your organization’s. You can be contacted, can’t you? Or do you just stalk people?”

She actually laughed at that. “Oh, wow, you have really grown a spine. You got a pen?”

He did, although he’d had to use his arm to write the number down because the pad he kept by his phone was gone. “Thanks.”

“Nah, thank you. He wouldn't have agreed to talk to us if you hadn't gone first.”

“Do you have a name I can call you?”

“Like a secret rebel name?” she teased. “It’s Vithusha. At least you can say it.”

“Oh, you don’t—”

“Have an accent? Neither do you on TV.”

“It comes and goes,” he explained. “And my Tamil's crap.”

“I don't speak anything but English,” she explained.

“Oh, but it is a South Indian name, right?”

“Yeah, traditional and proper and with the lucky number of characters. I'm told, not like I can read it in Tamil.”

“My mum tried to teach me and my sister when we were little,” he recalled, smiling. “But we decided she was fake reading because all the little twirly signs looked the same. I think she only learned it because it made her feel close to her birth parents even though she never met them.”

“Auch, that's some proper drama, Avali.”

“Call me Keenan, it's my rebel name.”


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Carry decides to play in the big leagues, with unexpected consequences...

##  & Cartwright

 

Carry wasn't good with people, but he was even worse with people on the phone. He knew this, but he also knew it wasn't acceptable to either text or video call a stranger unless you were physically unable to voice call.

It seemed completely illogical to him that James Blassic would prefer to get a call from a stranger than a text, but other people rarely made sense. He just hoped he could make sense to Blassic.

“Blassic.” The Hurricanes' goalie sounded gruff. Maybe he didn't just avoid talking to reporters but talking in general.

“This is Cartwright Johnson. I was hoping for a few minutes of your time?”

“Okay,” Blassic said. “I’m listening.”

Carry tried to summarize what Keenan had done and Blasic cut him off to tell him he did have a working TV, not to mention a whole team to bring him the freshest gossip. “Well,” Carry said a little too sharply. Maybe it wasn't that the goalie was circumspect, maybe his team's management had forbidden him from speaking so he wouldn't offend every person on the sport. “I’m sure you agree with what he said.”

“Are you?”

“Yes, because your helmet is thick enough I don't think you have brain damage and that's what it’d take to think there's only five of us because everybody else is just so keen on playing house.” His stomach dropped after he said it, but he always expected better of other omegas. It was like Keenan said, it was their fight.

He didn't manage to apologize, though, beacuse Blassic was already laughing. “Are you behind Avali's sudden attack of conscience then?”

The shock of his amusement wasn't enough to keep Carry's rage from resurfacing. “Why? Because alphas are all assholes unless an omega is pulling the strings?”

“Well, I don't see them lining up to speak on our behalf,” Blassic said calmly.

Carry tried to follow the older man's example. “There are people speaking up, though,” he said. “Maybe they just need a helping hand.”

“Are you going to give them one?”

Carry gritted his teeth at the challenge. “So they can ask me if I put Avali up to it too?”

“But you think I am in a position to do something? Or are you just hoping I won't be around next time to stop you scoring?”

Carry snorted. “This is serious, if you are not game—”

“Shush, rookie,” Blassic cut him off. “Who is actually coordinating this?”

“Coordinating? I just... One of our PR people gave me the idea. I got your number off Bauer.”

“Ah, that boy...” Blassic sighed. “And you are just jumping into this—”

“I don't see you doing any better!”

“No, don't get me wrong, you got balls all right. But this will need a little less brute force and speed and a lot more planning.”

Carry was silent. He knew Blassic was right, but that didn't mean he could think of a viable solution... But Blassic was already sighing again. “I guess there's nothing for it. I can get Paul on board, maybe Seriti if he's on the outs with his girlfriend.”

“What?”

“I'm offering to help, rookie. You in?”

“Yes,” Carry said, more so Blassic wouldn't take it back than because he was certain he wanted his help.

“Good,” Blassic decided. “Your PR rep is right, you stay quiet. But maybe you can drop a line about how important it was to have Paul as a role model when you were a Pee Wee.”

Carry was seriously tempted to tell the guy to fuck right off, but he was too good at this too waste—Carry just wished he wasn't so clearly aware of the fact. And it wasn't even completely untrue, although it hadn't been Paul Sire’s poster that adorned his childhood room but Diamond Johnson's. Even ten years later, she was still the only female omega to ever play professional hockey. She'd retired with an injury the year before Carry had entered the league and disappeared from the public eye better than a professional spy.

He wondered if somebody was looking at him that way. But even with the great season he'd had, he knew he hadn't earned it yet.

He wanted to. “Okay,” he agreed. “What about Harry Gruvell?”

Blassic grunted. “Gruvell... I wouldn't go knocking on that door if I were you. You'd be better off asking your captain, he's a gentleman.”

Carry swallowed. He couldn't diss his captain to someone outside the team. “Maybe,” he allowed.

“I'm adding your number,” Blassic decided. “I'll give you some dates soon.”

He had just taken over the whole thing like... But it was stupid to be angry. This meant Carry didn't have to call anyone else today. “Thank you,” he said. “I didn't expect—”

“Me either,” Blassic admitted. He sounded thoughtful. “Guess I underestimated you.”

“I'm used to it,” Carry said.

“Well, now you should get used to _using_ it,” Blassic replied. “Later, rookie.”

He stared at the phone in his hand until the minute changed.

 

&

 

He rolled off the bed like his house was on fire, even though whoever was calling could definitely call back if he missed it. His left leg had been a little more relaxed than he'd counted on and he cursed as the pins and needles travelled up his thigh like a shot.

And then the name on the screen made him pause. Except why should it? Avali probably wanted to arrange some extra practice since Thomas had walked out so early the previous day.

“Hey,” he greeted. He cringed when he realised how breathless he was.

“Hey, is this a good time?”

“Ah, yeah. I mean, sure.”

Avali kindly didn't ask him why he was babbling. “So, the activist lady called me earlier. I got her number for you.”

“Oh, thanks. Let me get a pen...”

“I can text it to you. That's not why I'm calling.”

“It isn't?” he asked and Keenan took long enough to answer that he couldn't help but notice how fast his pulse was in his throat.

“No, and I know you are gonna say it's none of my business, but... You will be careful, right?”

He was right, it wasn't any of his business. But, strangely, Carry didn't want to tell him to keep his concern to himself. Maybe because he knew it was genuine, and it was for him. It had nothing to do with Carry being an omega or Keenan being an alpha.

“No, Avali. I won't call a press conference to tell everyone traditionalists are dicks.”

“I thought you liked it,” Avali said quietly.

“What?” Carry asked. “Oh, yours? I did! But I obviously can't do that. It’d be...” He stopped. He was pretty sure Keenan had to have some idea of how badly the Titans had screwed him over from that time they'd played them, but that wasn't the same as openly discussing the most humiliating events of his life with...

“Yeah,” the alpha agreed.

“I just don't want to sit here and do nothing. And it's not even like that's any good: pretty much every single person I have talked to since your speech thinks it was my idea.”

“What?” Keenan's voice was sharp.

“Yeah, sorry,” Carry said lightly. “Nobody believes you are the mastermind here. I think it's all the muscles. Or maybe the head injuries. You have had a lot of those, too.”

The joking seemed to work because Keenan responded in kind. “You have had more head injuries than me. Didn’t you tell us that like half your teeth are fake?”

“That’s my mouth, Avali, that's not where the brain is.”

Keenan huffed. “I can't believe are asking you if it was your idea. I mean, what? I can't notice on my own?”

“You didn't notice on your own,” Carry pointed out carefully.

“Well, I could have. I would have, eventually.” He didn't sound sure.

“It takes more courage to do it like this,” Carry told him. “Because... it's not just admitting you were wrong, you have to admit that someone else was right and that’s... like losing.” He stopped, aware he'd completely mangled the explanation but at a loss as to how to fix it.

“Are you calling me a loser?” Keenan asked, and it took Carry a second to hear the repressed laughter in his voice.

“No!” he exclaimed, unable to help himself. “I’m calling you brave.” The word hung between them, too charged and too important. “And impulsive, reckless even,” he added weakly.

It was completely unbelievable, but Keenan wanted to believe him. Or to pretend he did at any rate. “So they are definitely going to ask you about it. Do you know what you are going to say?”

“Yeah, actually,” he said, suddenly pleased with himself. “James Blassic just told me,” he admitted. He wasn't keen on giving him credit, but it was due.

“Blassic? Do you know him?”

“No, but I called him to ask if he'd support... Well, you. This whole thing, really.”

“Oh, you did? Did he think it had been your idea too?”

“Was it?” Carry asked softly. He didn't want the weight of that doubt between them. Not on the ice, not off it.

“What?”

“I just mean... I know you believe it, but was it because of something I projected?”

He braced himself for indignation, but Keenan just sighed. “Carry, are you asking me if I read your mind?”

It was a joke. Except it wasn't funny because the telepathy Carry had so easily dismissed months earlier didn't seem half as intense as some of the things they had let each other see. Keenan couldn't recite Carry's thoughts, it was true, but he could have felt Carry’s pain.

“Come on,” his teammate insisted. “Who needs to read your mind? You told me what you thought about it pretty much the first time we talked.”

“I didn't think you were listening.”

“Well, I was, and you were right. I just didn't—”

“It's fine,” Carry cut in. Even on the phone it seemed like they couldn't keep things from getting too intense. “You more than made up for it with that speech!”

He’d already congratulated him but Keenan still sounded surprised. “You really liked it? Even though…”

“What?”

“Well, they are gonna ask questions. Not just about me. They asked me about you, and I tried—”

“It’s fine,” Carry insisted. “It’s what everyone is thinking, and you got out of it smooth as an eel… It was awesome.” He realised how giddy he sounded as soon as the words had left his mouth so tacked on, “Oh, you distracted me before. Blassic is pretty clever, turns out, he told me to talk about how Paul Sire being in the league really made me believe omegas could play.”

“But why Sire? Why not Blassic?”

“He is two years older,” Carry said, confused.

“Is he?”

“Sire was the second omega to make it into the league,” he explained as patiently as he could manage.

“I guess I have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Well, you are young. You got time,” he conceded. “But now that I think about it… Maybe Blassic will get Paul Sire to respond when I say that. He said he was sure he could get him to help.”

“What did you tell this guy?” Keenan asked.

“Nothing,” Carry said. “I just asked if he had seen your speech, he was super rude to me and then ended up up offering to coordinate the whole thing.”

Keenan laughed.  “Sounds like someone I know.”

“Are you calling me rude? After I got the two most famous omegas in the league to talk on your behalf?”

“Wait, Blassic will talk about it too?” There was a heavy pause before Keenan carefully explained, “He never talks to reporters, he's famous for it.”

Carry remembered his suspicions that Blassic’s silence wasn’t as much his choice as a preventative measure imposed by his team; but the guy who could plan a mediatic response in minutes wasn’t likely to be unable to control his mouth in public. Maybe he just didn’t _want_ to talk to the press. “He didn't promise or anything, but it sounded like it.”

“You are...” Keenan started to say. “I’m very impressed.”

Carry swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Yeah,” he demurred. “But I need to impress coach tomorrow, so...”

“Ah, yeah, good night then.”

“Good night, Keenan.” He put down the phone, but he couldn’t push Keenan’s voice from his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where do you think the plot is going? You like it? Should I get back to the drama of UST? :p


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I actually numbered the chapters and realised I have some I can post :)

##  & Keenan

The cup finals wasn’t the time to be distracted. But some god above or below was seriously unhappy with them because not only the Titans advanced to the finals for the first time in a good five years—just like the Hell Flames themselves—but they had got them right after they'd both bested the Salamanders. It was so unlikely that two teams that had ranked around 10# for the last two years would now be competing against the top ranked Salamanders and win that one was almost forced to consider divine intervention.

Keenan knew all too well he was going to have to be the sensible, calm one. Carry’s ice façade was just that; a superficial layer over a frankly nauseating combination of anger, resentment and pure animal fear that turned his sweet scent into a bitter, acidic smell that had Keenan struggling not to flinch. Fear a bit extreme, but then again, he wasn’t the one his teammates had betrayed. No, Keenan had lucked out with the Flames right off the bat. Even Sven had been great with him, handling their shared orientation like an in-joke instead of a competition. And Carry... Keenan didn't want to feel sorry for him, not because he was an omega and this was how people treated omegas who didn’t comform to their standards. He wondered if Carry would be okay with his compassion if he understood it came from the respect Keenan had for him and the Titans had owed him as a teammate and never delivered on.

It was a pity he couldn't afford to demand it from them with his fists. He shook himself from his dark mood—Carry had made it very clear he wanted to wipe the ice with them more than he wanted to humiliate them personally, or even make them bleed. Puccio might have been proud of being an alpha, but deep down he had to know he had done nothing to earn the advantages his presentation earned him. Plus, there was nothing quite like the sting of a loss to bring someone down a peg or two.

Keenan wanted Puccio laid flat. As for Villiers and his knowing looks… And maybe part of it were protective instincts he couldn’t control, but most of it was what he’d felt when he’d seen Carry’s reaction to meeting his old team again. Puccio and his team had done that, dropping Carry like he was on fire for doing something he needed. Something he couldn’t stop needing. Even if now he had sought professional help for it instead of... He shoved his clothes into his locker and breathed slowly, trying to recall long-abandoned morning yoga from his time at school. He managed to unclench his muscles enough to turn around smoothly. Sven was looking at him from the middle of the room.

His friend was already fully changed and, as usual, fully open so that Keenan could perceive the anxiety creeping at the edges. He shook his head, mouthing an empty reassurance that did nothing to change Sven’s scent of overheated metal. Sven took a step closer to his bench and clasped Keenan’s shoulder. “We got this. We won against the Salamanders, remember? This are the finals. Your first finals as a starter.”

It was true, Keenan’s rookie year had been the last year two of their veterans had played with them. He still remembered the wonder of watching them put a game together, even as he sometimes couldn’t help but resent how little ice time that left for him.

“Have you talked to Walliams and Sacks lately?” he asked Sven.

Keenan hadn’t kept in touch with the old-timers; they’d taught him a lot about hockey but they hadn’t been around long enough for them to be more than people who spend a lot of time together at work and sometimes hung outside it because they were in a foreign city and didn’t know anyone else.

Sven smiled, then gestured at Keenan to get changed and awkwardly took the bench besides him. “Walliams got married.”

“No _way_ ,” Keenan almost shouted. Walliams was a pretty grumpy person in general but if you got them ranting about marriage, monogamy and society’s stupid expectations, you were guaranteed to regret it. Keenan wondered if Walliams would have liked Carry. They both had that rage about the place they’d been put in, even though Walliams was a beta.

“It’s an open marriage, they made sure to tell me that like three times,” Sven added, sounding a little amused.

“Still signed a paper to certify they love someone, didn’t they?” Keenan replied, pulling on his skate laces—tighter than most people liked it but Keenan needed the added precision.

Sven laughed, clearly remembering Walliams opinion on the government ratifying people’s feelings and relationships. “You want to tell them that?”

Keenan pushed himself up. “They have been out of the game for five years,” he said, thinking of Walliam’s bulk. “I’m sure I could take them.”

“In a fistfight? Sure,” Sven agreed, taking Keenan’s offered hand and pulling him up. “But could you take the verbal scouring you’d get without crying?”

“Oh, shut up,” he replied, elbowing Sven just gently enough not to risk toppling either of them over in full gear. “That was only once, and I was drunk!”

“Sure, drunk on worship, maybe. You’d had like two beers,” Sven insisted, laughing as they made their way out to the ice to warm up.

 

&

 

Keenan was tempted to sit next to Carry instead of Thomas. They were both covered in gear from neck to toe and it wasn’t like they going to bump heads. But in the end, he couldn’t make his feet walk him there and he plopped down on his usual seat. Carry had closed off since he’d seen him inside. All Keenan could smell was the ice, and the lingering scent of waffles and and popcorn from the stands.

He risked a glance, but all he could see was his teammates’ profile as he watched Patel’s line on the ice—it was a pretty obvious choice after the clusterfuck their last match with the Titans had turned into. And Patel, Bauer and Santiago had done so well against the Salamanders that they deserved the spotlight—Bauer, in particular, had to resent being replaced by a newcomer.

Even so, he'd never given any sign that he did. He was an excellent player and he'd worked hard to get where he ease—but in a sport where talent and ego went hand in hand, Baeuer gave every appearance of admiring Carry's work with Keenan and Thomas.

Coach had decided to save the big guns for latter since the Titans had been playing so much better than usual. He hadn't mentioned the way they had targeted Carry last time. Maybe, Keenan considered for the first time, he knew why he had been traded and thought it was unwise to call attention to the rivalry.

Carry didn’t look particularly tense to Keenan, but then again, he wasn’t sure he could consciously read body language. Especially not Carry’s when he normally got a live feed with enough extra information he didn’t really need to look at him to follow his moods.

He was so anxious about offering him some support that he missed Patel losing the face-off to Lerroux until Carry jerked in place and cursed their teammate. Thomas elbowed him for it before Keenan could say anything, and Carry grudgingly muttered an apology. It wasn’t disloyalty, he just held everyone to his own exacting standards—and everyone came up short, Carry included. It had taken Keenan a while to understand that was pretty much the point—a goal so mighty that one could never stop straining to reach it. Carry could win the cup and MVP and every award there was and it still wouldn’t be enough, because the hockey he imagined was even more beautiful than the real thing he loved so fiercely.

Patel was blocked off by towering Villiers and lost the puck in the scuffle. Bauer picked it up with the usual squirrelly speed he was so good at and took off, passing to Santiago, who was forced to choose between trying for a goal or an awkward pass. He went for the goal, of course, like any rookie would have. He missed by less than Keenan would have anticipated, which would be poor consolation if it cost them the match but told him the precision drills Sven and he had deviced were working.

The Titans got the puck into their area so fast, it made Keenan's vision blur. It was Puccio leading the way, with Lerroux at his side. Their smooth passes back and forth made Carry growl loud enough to be heard and Keenan realized they were using the awareness alphas had of each other’s space. Just like he did with Sven. Just like he’d done with Carry at the beginning.

 _They needed to swap lines now_.

He was assistant captain and it was well within his job description to pull the coaches’ sleeves if he saw something they were missing, but now he was stuck. Carry and he could have used their bond to counteract—and best—the Titans’ strategy, but there was no way for Keenan to communicate that to his coaches.

“Fuck,” he spat, furious at himself, the world, the _idiocy_.

“They are…” Thomas started, then lowered his voice and turned his head towards Keenan. “Are they doing what I think they are doing?” he asked in a whisper.

Keenan didn’t have time to answer because Lerroux and Puccio had got around Molierre and were on Sven. Sven deflected Puccio’s shot, but Lerroux shoved in the rebound as Puccio circled behind him to keep Molierre off his captain’s range.

“ _Keenan,”_ Carry said as the Titans fans erupted in celebration.

Keenan turned to look at him, helpless. “I can’t…”

And he truly couldn't. He thought the coaches were going to call them in anyway but maybe they were too confused by the Titans' strategy to think straight. They signaled at Sven an offer to come out but their captain shook his head, teeth gritted and looking utterly furious. He must not have known what was happening, Keenan realised. And he couldn't help feeling responsible. He should have told him about this. He'd basically cut Sven off after he'd pointed out how dangerous using his connection to Carry was for Keenan's well-being. Of course it wouldn't occur to him that two alphas could do something similar.

He winced as Sven got hit with the puck right on his weak shoulder—a puck that high couldn't be an accident, and it hadn't even gone in. Their next attempt made it very clear that they were aware of Sven's old injury and trying to get him out of the game. Keenan was on his feet and by the coaches' bench before Sven got back to his feet. They were losing five to one and if the Titans re-injured Sven's shoulder, he could end up in hospital.

"You need to send Alarski in right now," he almost spat. "They are trying to take him out."

Coach Ramirez hesitated, then shook his head. "He knows what he is doing. Alarski can't take Lerroux, especially not like this."

"Then send _me_ in," Keenan replied. "I know how to stop him. I swear." He saw the disbelief writ clear on the older beta's face. "It's an alpha thing," he offered.

It would have been enough, but right then the referee's whistle went off. Keenan looked up to see Sven had paused the play. He was clutching at his left shoulder with a grip so tight his fingers had to be going numb inside his gloves. _Fuck_. He was going to kill Lerroux.

Sven skated out without help but that was all that could be said for it. He looked pale when he removed his helmed and his hair was wet with sweat.

Keenan stepped as close as the medics would allow. "Sven..."

His friend raised his gaze to his, shook his head. "Go in," he demanded between gritted teeth. He wasn't just hurting, either, he exuded fury like a volcano did smoke.

Keenan nodded, a silent promise, and turned for the ice. He hadn't even been called in but Patel's line was already coming out, looking shaky and exhausted. He felt Carry behind him and skated to centre ice, sure Thomas couldn't be far behind.

He met Lerroux's eyes through the grill and the arsehole had the nerve to smirk.

Maybe that was what sealed their fate. He was too angry, and Carry was never going to be anything but emotional in one way or another around his former team. A bond was a great asset, of course. But it was also a great weakness. Especially when the people on both sides were raging with a combination of fury and fear.

Thomas had tried to reign them in, but the truth was that there was no time for words. They were better at communication than Lerroux and Puccio, of course, but that didn't help much when they both kept making stupid mistakes—including forgetting to signal what they were going to do even through the bond.

They managed to score twice, once each. And, to Keenan's bitter satisfaction, Lerroux and Puccio's new strategy had fallen to pieces and they hadn't managed to score on Alarski at all despite their second goalkeeper's relative inexperience.

It was still 5-3.

They had lost to the Titans again.

 

&

 

The changing room wasn’t silent, exactly, because you couldn’t get eleven guys to change out of giant pads and skates without a bit of a racket. But nobody was talking much. It wasn’t just the fact that they were one point behind the Titans in the rankings after that game, or that they had lost to a team who clearly had it out for them. Sven wasn’t just their captain, he was their friend and he was the force that united them. Not perfectly because he hadn’t had that long with all of them—Carry was the newet but Alarski had only joined them three months earlier after their old goalie had suffered a serious injury.

Keenan cleared his throat. “Guys,” he called and he didn’t even have to repeat it before faces started turning his way. “So that sucked,” he said softly. He thought someone snorted but he kept going. “I’m not going to try to talk to you about silver linings or whatever because that’s why Sven got the job. It was shit, we weren’t good enough and they took some dope and forgot how to fucking play in their positions!” He had to stop himself from mentioning Pucio’s newfound love of the offensive left more specifically. “But it’s one game and we are only one point behind. I’ll get you back that point and more, I promise you. And next week, we’ll make up the points and show the fucking Titans how you actually play hockey without having to switch people around to fuck with your opponents’ heads.”

The cheers and approving noises weren’t that loud, but he wasn’t Sven and he knew speech-making wasn’t his greatest ability. At least this one wasn’t going to be on television. “ _Now_ we are going to go visit our captain and then we are going to get drunk and high in a safe place where a teammate can keep an eye on us.”

They took the team bus over to the hospital. The driver agreed to take the extra shift and drop them back at the hotel after an hour for a fee and Coach Ramirez, who had stayed behind while Coach Sari accompanied Sven to hospital, waved an okay from the back seat.

Sven was in bed when they arrived, but he didn’t have his own room, which tended to be sign that he wasn’t due to stay long. Keenan and Molierre went in first, since the nurses downstairs had warned them it was only three visitors at a time and coach was bound to be inside.

“Oh, there you are,” Coach Sari said, getting to her feet at once. She frowned. “I take it you didn’t win.”

“We closed the goal, and scored twice,” Molierre offered with a shrug. “But there wasn’t enough time to catch up.”

Keenan didn’t say anything, walking towards Sven and pretending not to feel his coach’s gaze on him. “Hey,” he told Sven softly. “How’s the shoulder?”

Sven looked sleepy and loose. He was probably on something for the pain. “Just a strain,” he said. And fuck, they must have overdone it with the dosage because he sounded _high_.

Keenan turned to Sari. “Why is he like this? Does the doctor know?”

His coach gave him an unimpressed look. “Apparently your brilliant captain decided to skip a meal before the game today, so it hit him hard. He’s just a little high, let him enjoy the buzz while it lasts.”

“Is his arm going to be okay?”

“Yes, yes, just need to rest it a couple days. No training but he will play the next game.”

Keenan exhaled, guiltily relieved. Sven’s well-being should have been his priority but he was all too aware of how utterly lost they’d be without him on the ice.

“Keenan?” Sven asked suddenly and Keenan glanced up to see him trying to reach the bedside table. He forced his good hand down at once.

“Don’t! What do you want? I’ll get it.”

“Phone. Helga,” Sven explained.

“Oh, but coach…” He trailed off. Coach Sari wasn’t exactly known for her warm and fuzzy feelings, or her attachment to regulation. She might not have called Helga—she’d probably thought it wasn’t worth bothering for a minor injury.

Helga must not have been able to watch the game because there were no missed calls or texts on Sven’s phone. Thanks the gods for that, at least. Keenan met Sven’s eyes. “I’m calling her and letting her know you are high as a kite, okay?”

Sven frowned, pouting a little, but Molierre got his attention by recounting the rest of the game for him and he was soon ranting about the Titans being sneaky bastards while Keenan filled his bondmate on what had happened.

Helga took it well, asking the pertinent questions and not sounding agitated, even though she must have been worried sick. Bondmates were meant to feel it when something happened to their partner but outside the sensationalist press and the romanticised movies, the reach did not extend to foreign countries. Keenan had actually seen Helga wince in the stands when Sven got walloped on the ice once—he wondered if she’d have rather known. If the distance felt wrong, if she would have rather suffered when he did because that way she could be sure he was safe...

“Okay,” she decided once he’d told her as much as he knew. “Give him the phone.”

“Um, okay.” Keenan turned to Sven and had to actually take hold of his arm again—the fact that they were friends and that he was out of it kind of made it okay by the loosest interpetations of protocol—to get him to take his phone.

“ _Helga_.” Sven stilled at once, a sudden clarity taking over his face. And then he put the phone to his ear, awkwardly with his messed up reflexes but with careful deliberation. He closed his eyes, relaxing against the headboard.

The effect of the drugs couldn’t have dissipated but it seemed there was something stronger than opiacids.

Molierre cleared his throat and Keenan realised he was staring. “Should we get the other guys to come in to see him?”

By the time everyone else had gone in for a few minutes and it was Carry’s turn, Sven was a lot more sober and looked ready to fall asleep. It was still impossible to miss that Carry was tense as a wire, or that he’d opened up his shields just enough not to seem completely blank. Keenan actually had to think about his own shields before he realised he had been projecting openly since they’d left the rink. He’d completely forgotten to close himself up. Carry hadn’t mentioned it, of course. He tried to think back to the bus but all he could remember was his irritation with how slow traffic was and worrying about Sven. He probably hadn’t spared Carry a thought until now…

“Hey,” Carry offered. “Sorry my ex-teamates are dicks.”

Sven choked a little on the water he was sipping. Fortunately it was only a sippy cup so it just bounced around the floor a little when he lost his grip. When Keenan looked up from picking it up for him, Carry was barely repressing a smile.

“You put up with them a lot longer,” Sven said. He looked strangely somber and was projecting something close to regret.

Carry didn’t respond for a long moment. All Keenan could catch from him was confusion, and then it was like he exhaled and relaxed and his scent turned sweeter. Keenan looked away, barely keeping himself from slamming the doors of his mind. He turned the dial down instead.

He missed whatever they said next because the next words he caught were Carry saying they should go and leave Sven to rest up. It wasn’t like Keenan could argue with that and the hospital smell was the same in every country so he’d been itching to get out of there since he’d walked in anyway. He followed him out of the room and through the long corridor, barely stopping long enough in the café to call out to the guys to get back in the bus. By the time he walked up the ramp, Carry was completely closed off again and Keenan could follow his example.

It was for the best, he was planning on getting seriously drunk to try and get Pucio’s smirking face off his mind. And Sven’s grimace of pain. And his soft, easy look when he’d heard Helga’s voice.

He didn’t know what was worse: how angry he was that Sven had got hurt, or how jealous he was that he had someone who could make the pain go away just by speaking to him.

He bought the first round when they got there, and the second. And then he wasn’t sober enough to get up anymore because some fans had sent them shots—as if following them all the way to the Netherlands wasn’t enough proof of their devotion—and then someone passed around the brownies and things got funnier.

Except for some reason he found himself holding onto Thomas shoulder and insisting, “But I should have! I had to keep my cool! I… Carry had a reason to be fucked up. I was supposed to be strong for him.”

“Wow,” Thomas said slowly. “You are smashed. If Carry hears you, he’ll punch you.”

Keenan frowned. Carry had never punched him. He couldn’t, really, unless he did it with gloves. He checked his hands but he’d left his gloves in his bag, of course. “He can’t touch me,” he reminded Thomas.

“Do you want him to touch you?” Thomas asked. He’d lowered his voice and leaned in close.

“He--”

“What are you doing?” He looked up and found Carry standing by them, holding up two glasses of water. He passed one to Thomas, then gave Keenan a dubious look. He was closed up but Keenan could still tell—he could _see it_ in his face. It was kind of magical after how hard he’d been to read him at the beginning—even if it only worked sometimes. “Keenan? You there? Drink the water.”

He drank. It was cold. He’d thought Carry was cold, he remembered. He glanced up again and saw Carry watching him. He had really dark eyelashes for someone with blond hair. It made his eyes look bluer, even with the bad cheap lightning in the hotel bar to give it ambiance or something.

Thomas startled him when he burst out laughing, then made it worse by hitting his arm and making him spill water on himself. “Thomas!” he growled, shoving him away.

“ _Shut up_ , Keenan. Seriously!”

 

&

 

He woke up in his clothes. He'd showered after the game but he must have sweated during the night because he felt stiff and itchy, and then he made the mistake of trying to roll over to reach the glass of water on the bedside table and his stomach rolled with him. He managed to keep from throwing up—barely—but he had to close his eyes and curl up and stay very still.

"You alright?" Thomas asked, way too loud.

Keenan felt the only possible response was a snarl, but he was all too aware that if he managed a whimper without embarrassing himself, it'd be an accomplishment.

The bed dipped by his side and there was a hand on his shoulder. Thomas waited a moment longer before he nudged his face high enough to help him sip. The water was stale and it made him realise his own mouth tasted even worse. Thomas passed him the bottle of analgesic drops and held him up while he squirted half a dozen too many onto his tongue.

"No overdosing," his friend said, snatching it away, and Keenan accepted defeat and collapsed on his face.

 

&

 

The next thing he was aware of was the scent of food. He was conscious enough to remember to move carefully but the drops had done their work and he felt groggy but mostly human again. He was in Thomas hotel room, not his own.

No shoes, but for some reason his friend had let him sleep in his jeans and t-shirt. He pulled his shit over his head before heading over to the table where Thomas had ordered too much takeaway. Indian, too, which was unlikely to meet Keenan's exacting standards.

Thomas gave him a look when he saw he was shirtless but Keenan shrugged it off. "You could have helped me take it off. It stinks."

"And risk my virtue?" Thomas asked with badly concealed glee. "No way, Mx monosexual."

Keenan plopped down in one of the heavy armchairs provided.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, covering a yawn.

He was used to people not believing him about his sexuality, of course, but _Thomas_ had seemed to be a happy exception—or at least happy enough not to bring it up one way or another.

"Well," his linemate said with a smirk. "Let me think, maybe it was the way you sounded _sad_ that Carry couldn't punch you because he can't touch you. _Or_ it could be the way you started waxing poetry about his eyelashes when he showed up with some water."

Keenan barely managed to swallow the mouthful of mango lassi he'd made the mistake of drinking. He choked anyway and ended up panting for breath.

Thomas didn't even look sorry when he looked up. Keenan opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Did... what did he hear?"

"Carry?" Thomas sounded soberer now. "Just the bit about his eyes. Keenan, you know I'm messing with you, right? I was too drunk to help you undress, that's all."

"So I didn't..."

"Oh, no, you definitely did tell Carry he had very pretty eyes. But what's the big deal? Guy that pretty has to know it anyway, and it's not like he'll take it the wrong way. He's not exactly a fan of protocol, is he? He interrupts you all the time."

Keenan made himself think through it, even though his brain felt grainy and uncooperative. "But the... the touching thing. He didn't hear that, right?" He couldn't resist glancing up.

Thomas looked curious but not exactly surprised. He shook his head. "No, don't think so."

Keenan exhaled. "Okay."

He bit into some paratha, just to give himself a moment to process. It wasn't like he hadn't embarrassed himself much further than when he'd asked Carry out, really, and Thomas was right, Carry couldn't be unaware of how attractive he was.

"Keenan..." Thomas said softly after letting him eat in silence for a few minutes. "Do you... Do you have feelings for him?"

Keenan froze with his spoon halfway to his mouth. Then put it down. It had been hard to eat when he felt half-nauseus, but now he could barely breathe. Thomas couldn't read his emotions from his scent but he knew him well enough to follow his movements in the ice...

And the truth was that he didn't even want to lie. It was hard enough to lie to Carry about it, or as good as. "It's... I _am_ monosexual," he explained, voice going a little high with frustration. "I wouldn't... I really don't feel a thing when I see a naked guy except a little jealous if they got good abs or something."

"I didn't ask you if you were attracted to him," Thomas replied.

"Yes," Keenan spit out. It was the answer to both questions but he wasn't sure he could explain that. He knew there was a difference, he’d been in love with Jessica and Amalia and dated other girls who hadn’t quite made him cross that line… But he honestly didn’t understand where any lines were with Carry. He’d skated right past all of them, as fast as he was on the ice.

Thomas didn't ask him to clarify—maybe he could see that it didn't matter. "Then the bond... It must be hard for you."

He nodded, then shrugged. "We need it."

"Yes, but you can still want to stop. You can still _stop_. Hockey isn't more important than your well-being."

Keenan tried to imagine it: what it would be like to stop using the bond, to stop getting Carry's scent and Carry's feelings—his frustration and his joy, his fear and his pain, his satisfaction and his need... Would that be better? Would it make Keenan want it less? Or more? Because he was used to this much now, to this accidental insight into Carry's state of mind, this special connection that made Carry not simply understandable but interested in what Keenan was feeling and thinking. Since he'd given the speech, it felt like they were actually talking about things that weren't hockey, like they got each other outside the ice. He could give that up and fuck up their game in the process and any chance they had to win the cup. Or he could shut up about it and keep his misplaced feelings to himself.

"It wouldn't..." _Work,_ he thought, but instead he said, "help."

He wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth, but, he realised, he might as well have been because unless Carry himself asked him to, he wouldn’t be able to do it.

He couldn’t give it up. Just the idea make him feel sick.

 


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.pinterest.co.uk/njlysk/hot-guys-inspiration-for-my-books/ >> For people who wanted to know what Carry and Keenan look like :)

##  & Chapter 53: Cartwright

Carry didn't expect them to best the Howling Hurricanes—even Carry's mother, fierce as she got when he was on a winning streak, knew enough about hockey to realise it was highly unlikely even if one was feeling optimistic. Optimism wasn't Carry's thing, but stubbornness was.

He didn't care if they didn't stand a chance against the best team in the league, he was going to make sure the point gap stayed as small as possible and he played them into the ground.

And for that, he needed the bond as open as he could manage without knocking either of them out. It wasn't a problem, exactly.

Except using the bond wasn't free, of course. Carry was profoundly aware that they were playing the Hurricanes in their own turf in Rotterdam and that although he could call the agency, he’d have to invite them to the hotel room where he was staying with the team. If he got caught with an alpha escort… Well, it wouldn’t be as bad as if somebody got wind that he’d slept with his alpha teammate, but he couldn’t count on not getting kicked out of the team, either.

It had been a whole month since his last heat and if he...

But he could not afford to be afraid, to hesitate at all. Sleeping with Keenan now that they were okay—more than that, really, that they were _friends_ —would be beyond stupid. It could destroy all their progress and their game along with their personal relationship.

But they were only ten points behind the Hurricanes and last in the ranking of the four teams in the finals thanks to their loss to the Titans. If they didn’t win back enough points, their run for the cup was over. _That_ was a certainty, he reminded himself. His body’s willful cycles were anything but.

He would have to chance it.

 

&

 

He didn't tell Keenan. After all, what would it help to throw him off? He knew he couldn't touch Carry and he sat as far from him as he could possibly manage while staying in the same plane without being asked.

Thomas had sat on the other side of the little side table and poked at him until he'd agreed to chat for a while on the condition that his linemate leave him alone the rest of the trip.

Thomas wasn't too bad about it, really. He started off talking about the Fire Salamander defenders and Carry got caught up dissecting their play in detail—they had been watching tape so much he'd gone to bed with a headache every day for a week—and arguing which of their own strategies would work best to counteract them.

Thomas huffed. “You always want to use the—” He swallowed the word just in time but Carry glared at him anyway, heart beating too fast. Thomas signed an apology against his chest. “My point is that we have to diversify. I mean, if anyone can't play...” Carry almost growled at that, stopping his linemate in his tracks. “What?” Thomas asked. “I didn't mean to get pneumonia, Carry. Didn't you tell me I was allowed to be sick?”

Carry stared. He'd thought...

Thomas frowned at him. “What did you think I was talking about?” he asked, so low Carry could barely hear him across the small space between them.

“I—Sorry. I'm a bit...” He signed 'out of sorts' instead of saying it, feeling his face flame up and only staying in place with an effort.

“You thought I was talking about heat,” Thomas said flatly.

Carry shrugged, as much of an admission as he could manage.

“So what?” Thomas asked. “I’m allowed to get pneumonia but you are not allowed to go into heat?”

He was still whispering but Carry couldn't keep himself from cringing.

“It’s just as natural and just as out of your control,” Thomas pointed out reasonably. And Carry had never had pneumonia but he'd had colds, and it wasn't the same...

“You can't compare being sick with...”

“Have you ever been? Sick, I mean,” Thomas said.

Carry glanced up at his strange tone. “No, not really.”

“Well, I have. Migraines,” he explained. He had lost all his good cheer, so much so that he almost looked like a different person. “Sometimes so bad I wanted to carve my eyes out. Bad enough to curl up in the floor and cry. Bad enough to hurt myself because it meant it hurt somewhere that wasn’t my head for a few seconds.”

Carry stared at him, open mouthed and frozen. He'd thrown up from drinking too much and sure, it'd sucked, but it'd been over after a few minutes.

But he had dug his own nails into the skin of his legs to try and take some of the pressure away from the unbearable emptiness of his body during heat. He'd come out of it with blood-stained sheets more than once. And he’d thought… Well, most omegas would have understood, but not all.

It would have never occurred to him that a beta could understand.

“If you feel half as bad as that during heat,” Thomas continued. “I don't even understand how you haven't missed a single game all season.”

He was too shocked too quite suppress his flinch at that and Thomas looked up at exactly the right moment to see it. He licked his lips, eyes scanning Carry’s face until Carry had to look away.

“What happened?” Carry asked. “I mean, you are better now…”

Thomas took a little too long to answer, but he did answer, “I found the right doctor. She found the right meds. Sometimes I still get them but they are not… I just need to take some aspirin and sleep it off. It’s never been that bad again.”

Carry glanced up. “That easy?” he asked, unthinking, and saw Thomas’sface tighten but he couldn’t find right words fast enough.

“It was _not_ easy,” his friend bit out. “It took three years of trying different meds.”

“Fuck,” Carry said, feelingly. “Are you serious? Three years? But migraines are so common!”

“Yeah, well.” Thomas shrugged. “I guess I’m a special snowflake.”

“I—” He stopped. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing again, not when Thomas had obviously been trying to show him that he got what he was going through. He glanced at his friend, fiddling with the menu even though they all got pre-packaged lunches with a high protein intake, and reached out in the only way that made sense.

His hand landed a little too hard on Thomas’sshoulder, but he still squeezed. His friend looked up and offered him a tired smile.

 

&

 

“You remember where we were last year today?” Binker asked, and Carry knew what he was getting to but he couldn’t help but remember where _he_ had been.

He’d been home, about drunk enough to watch the finals but not drunk enough to forget his team had dropped him the day after they’d been eliminated. Not _because_ they had been eliminated, although the coaches had talked about the team needing a change and Carry being better suited to a different team. He hadn’t got any offers yet, he had been in the wind. The Titans had made eight in the rankings, four slots under what they needed to make the playoffs but nothing embarrassing for Carry’s first season in the league. He’d played well for them, solid, hard-working hockey, he’d learned their style of play and adapted his own, he’d done the drills until his hands cramped too much to manage breakfast in the morning.

And it hadn’t been enough. Because he’d needed more than that, he’d needed to touch someone and he wasn’t allowed.

It was fine for Pucio, of course. Ali. He remembered how odd it’d felt to say his name at first, and odder still later to call him Pucio to the team. Not that he’d had many opportunities to do that before Ali had told Villiers not just that he’d finally got Carry to sleep with him but that Carry had been a virgin when it’d happened.

He double-checked his shields were up and exhaled slowly, trying to listen to Binker’s comeback speech. The Hell Flames had come ninth the previous season and Binker was right, even getting to the finals—which ensured them fourth plae—was a big step forward. And Carry agreed with his point whole-heartedly: why stop there? They had defeated the Salamanders once, and nobody had expected that. Who said they couldn’t beat the Hurricanes? All they needed was a little butterfly’s wing in China, really.

“We all know we got what we need to make it happen,” Binker continued, looking around. “Thomas and Keenan were great, but with Johnson… Well, I think someone mentioned we are on fire,” he added with a smirk.

Moliere groaned in sympathy. “Oh goddess above, save us from the English and their puns!”

Santiago laughed and Sven nodded. “Can’t help themselves,” he said in mock compassion. “But seriously, you guys are amazing together. I have never seen a line connect that quickly. We are lucky to have you, Johnson.” 

Carry stared at him for a moment, heart beating fast. He wanted so badly to believe Binker meant it… But this was the same guy who’d accused him of manipulating his mate to get him to defend omega rights…

It didn’t matter, really, Binker and he didn’t need to be friends to agree about hockey, did they? “Yes, you are,” he told him, trying on a smirk for size.

Thomas snorted next to him and half the guys in the team burst out laughing at the floored looked on Binker’s face.

“Okay, okay,” Binker raised his voice above the din. “Get changed, we have some arse to kick!”

 

&

 

Blassic played with his shields completely closed. Carry had known this somewhere in the back of his mind but it’d never registered. It had never mattered that much; Carry had always kept himself dialled down during games—not completely, after all, it was nice to get some feedback on any alphas on the ice, but close enough as to make no difference. He didn’t really know how it worked with other omegas, he could feel them around when he met them but did compatibility matter when you weren’t meant to mate?

Nobody had ever proven that bonds were meant to be exclusively sexual and romantic, really. Carry thought what Keenan had said to Thomas was true, even if they’d been trying to distract him and Thomas was a beta. They had a connection and it could have taken any numbers of forms.

With Blassic the form the connection wanted to take was mostly Carry’s stick through his helmet, but it was definitely intense. And Blassic was good enough at goal to drive any forward mad, but then Carry realised he was almost too perfect stopping Keenan in particular. Thomas and Carry had both scored but Blassic had deflected their centre three times already.

He almost tripped over his own skates as the realisation swept through him: what if Blassic was reading Keenan? If they were compatible enough… His stomach twisted uncomfortably at the idea but he made himself breathe through it and pulled at Keenan’s mind through the bond to get his attention before lowering his own shields down to a mere level 2. He signalled the next play to Thomas the boring unsupernatural way and let him tell Keenan.

It didn’t work out so great because it was a play meant to be executed fast and flawlessly and Keenan had designed it so he could start it himself. Blassic’s d-women took the puck from Carry and sent it flying down towards the Flames’ goal and it ended up inside it, lighting it up.

Carry swore under his breath, and almost jumped out of his skates when Keenan slid to a stop next to him. “Why did you—?”

“Blassic,” Carry cut him off. “He is stopping all your goals.”

“You… Oh, _fuck_ ,” Keenan said. “Okay, okay, manual it is. It’s fine.” He took his place in front of the Hurricanes’ captain.

That time he finally managed to score and Carry breathed a sigh of relief and pushed harder, using his speed to get around the d-women and scoring himself right afterwards.

And then they were even. 6-6 and there were only fifteen minutes left.

Maybe they’d got cocky over it, he wasn’t sure afterwards. Or maybe Blassic had told his d-women to step it up; whatever the case, the Hurricanes suddenly went on the offensive. Thomas lost the puck in the middle of one of their best plays and the Hurricanes leftwinger picked it up and carried it almost all the way to goal, passing to their gigantic centre-forward just when Moliere blocked his progress.

6-7.

Carry had closed himself up completely at that and Keenan had done the same, but it didn’t seem to matter. It wasn’t even about Blassic anymore because they couldn’t keep the puck long enough to get anywhere close to the Hurricanes’ goal.

It almost felt like they’d been holding back all game and now they had decided they were done. And there was nothing Carry could do to change their minds, no matter how fast he skated or how much effort he put in. When the Hurricanes scored again, three minutes till the end of the game, he opened himself up wide in a fit of rage and made Keenan trip across the ice. He couldn’t see Blassic but Sven jerked a little in place and bent his knees in preparation.

 _Stay quiet_ , he said in his head. He was so wide open it almost felt like Keenan _had_ to hear him, whatever he’d said about telepathy being impossible. He must have got the message because he didn’t open back up. Or maybe he was just heading Carry’s previous warning. It didn’t matter, he practically delivered the puck to Carry’s stick in a silver plate and caught Thomas’srebound just as easily from behind. He was set up so perfectly to score, Carry swore when he saw that Blassic had turned just in time to stop him.

The bell went. The game was over.

Carry let himself lean down and put his hands on his knees, panting harshly now that breathing could once again be a priority. He’d played as hard as he could. They all had, and it still hadn’t been enough…

“Come on,” Thomas said, elbowing him gently and catching him when he stumbled. “I know you have no sense of proportion but you realise we were playing the _Howling Hurricanes_ , right?”

Carry grumbled but let him lead the way to shake hands with the fucking Hurricanes.

Blassic met his eyes with a smile. “Well played, rookie. Beatiful passes,” he added, glancing towards Keenan. Did he _know_ what they were doing? Carry had assumed he was just about compatible enough with Keenan to be able to read him and had taken advantage of the fact, but… Had he ever found an alpha of his own with whom he could communicate the way Carry communicated with Keenan? If he knew—

He shoved the thought away. If Blassic knew, he’d have said something to the referees. If anything, he had to assume they could sense each other on the ice the same way any alpha and omega would. “Save it,” he said curtly. “You can congratulate me when we win.”

Blassic laughed out loud at that and gave him a condescending nod. “Sure, rookie.”

Carry rolled his eyes at him and let him go—Blassic could believe whatever he wanted. And then he realised where Blassic was headed and turned to look. He had reached Keenan, who’d opened up to a polite level 2 after the game. Surely if they were compatible…

His hand got squeezed hard enough to make him flinch and he glanced back forward to find one of the d-women who’d given him such a hard time. She looked young enough to be in secondary school—wide eyed and pretty—and mean enough as well. She gave him a wide dangerous smile before she let go of his hand and moved on to Thomas.

She was right, really, she deserved his attention. It was just… He made himself keep looking forward. He could ask Keenan about it later.

Even if they were compatible, what they’d told Thomas was true: it didn’t really mean that much on its own.

 

&

 

He wasn’t angry at Blassic or anything, but he thought they deserved time to lick their wounds in peace after a defeat. The other omega didn’t agree. They’d barely left the stadium when Carry’s phone went off.

“Didn’t have time to tell you but Paul is going on TV tonight,” Blassic opened with.

It took Carry a whole ten seconds to figure out it was him. “What?”

“The Waves are out of the running so he’s got free time. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, it’ll be all hockey predictions except for one thing. He is going to talk about you and me and how impressive it is that two of the top teams of the league have omegas in them.”

“Oh.” Now Carry was starting to catch on. “Do you think I should say something?”

“You most definitely will have to say something,” Blassic said. Carry thought he might have been rolling his eyes at him—it was always hard to tell over the phone but Blassic seemed intent on broadcasting his every emotion and opinion. “Reporters will go for it, no matter if you win or lose.”

“And I’ll give them the piece about Paul being my important role model,” Carry finished.

“Huh,” Blassic hummed. “I’m starting to think you can be taught, rookie.”

“Whatever, old man, wait until we meet on the ice again.”

“Looking forward to it, and to that nice young alpha you have trailing after you, too,” he added with clear intent.

Carry bit back an insult, but it didn’t really matter because Blassic had already hung up.

“Who was that?” Thomas asked from the seat next to him. Since they were abroad, they were all taking the team bus back and forth.

Carry hesitated, then just told him. “Blassic.”

“James Blassic?” Thomas echoed, almost gapping.

“You know how Keenan gave that speech? Blassic is going to get some other omegas to speak up so he won’t get all the heat.”

“So you know each other?” Thomas frowned. “He’s much older than you and you never… Wait, did he like, call you up as a fellow omega when you started playing pro?”

Carry snorted. “Why the hell would he? He’s just a guy I share a random genetic trait with. You and I are both white, why didn’t you call me up?”

“He’s calling you up now,” Thomas pointed out. Maybe it was all the paranoia with Uri but he was getting uncomfortably good at paying attention lately.

“Yeah, well, I called him first. I think maybe I shocked him into doing something because I did it first and he is a competitive arsehole.”

“Wait, you just went and called James Blassic to ask him to, what, talk to the press for you?”

“Did you see how he blocked Avali?” Someone asked from the aisle and Carry jumped.

Thomas and he turned towards Moliere, who didn’t look half as excited as he’d sounded. “Yeah, he’s something else,” Thomas agreed.

Moliere huffed, visibly irritated. “Just don’t have private conversations in the bus, will you? We all get hit to the head a lot but somebody is bound to overhear something eventually.”

When they didn’t reply, he shook his head at them and kept walking towards the front.

“Did he just...?” Thomas asked Carry with raised eyebrows.

“He is right,” Carry said quietly. “It was stupid.”

Thomas elbowed him none too gently. “Well, all those knocks to the head, what’ya gonna do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a bit stuck at this point (this point being chapter 59)... How keen are you on reading about hockey games? I just wrote 2 in a row and I'm a bit blah but I *had* planned a deadmatch... So do I let them end the season or not? Thoughts?


	38. Chapter 38

##  & Chapter 54: Keenan

“Excellent work,” Sven said. He was standing in front of Carry and Keenan could clearly see that he’d have patted anyone else on the shoulder to go with the praise. He hoped Carry couldn’t tell—although maybe he liked being able to decide if he wanted an alpha to be allowed to touch him, Keenan would have guessed he resented needing special treatment.

“Thanks,” Carry said with a smile. He smelled sweet and pleased and Keenan made himself glance away. He was safe, really. Carry was keeping himself dialled to level 1 for Sven’s sake but Keenan had learned his lesson from his drunken babbling—he was going to firmly toe the line between tipsy and drunk and he was not letting his guard down even a little bit while he was projecting loud and clear for Carry to pick up. So far, Carry didn’t seem to even notice he was the only one of them projecting. Keenan wondered if he truly didn’t notice or he just didn’t care. He wasn’t sure what was worse. Because _he_ cared. Any time he was in a room with Carry and he couldn’t smell his scent he felt tense and unhappy, like something was pulling at him.

“I thought you were angry with Sven?” he asked when their captain had gone back to the pool table where Santiago and Alarski were having a match to the death as the rest of the guys cheered them on. They were young and hopeful, Santiago a proper rookie and Alarski only a year with the team, and they seemed so full of energy for so many things that weren’t hockey…

Carry turned to him in surprise. “What?” he asked, and his expression reminded Keenan that _Carry_ was that young. Except he didn’t look it. No, that wasn’t it. He looked nineteen alright, he just didn’t _act_ nineteen. He was careful in a way Keenan hadn’t known to be at that age and that he didn’t think Thomas had quite learned yet at twenty-two.

“Because of what he said…” He lowered his voice. “About the speech being your idea?”

“Oh, that?” Carry asked, going back to his drink. “I was annoyed. It’s pointless anyway, and I don’t want to cause tensions in the team.”

“What’s pointless?”

He shrugged, took a swig of his drink. “You can’t expect too much from people who have too much,” he explained, avoiding Keenan’s gaze. Keenan was no psych but even he could tell that it was odd that Carry had gone from staring at him and listening in on his conversations with other people to avoiding his gaze again. Level 1 didn’t tell him much beyond the fact that Carry was a little annoyed—his scent a slightly sour. Nothing specific. Nothing Keenan could fix or even put into words.

“From people or from alphas?” Keenan asked in a clipped tone.

Carry definitely noticed that, no bond necessary, but when turned and met his eyes, he didn’t look surprised. “Alphas are people, and they have too much,” he said evenly, daring Keenan to disagree.

“Doesn’t mean they can’t figure that out,” Keenan said in response.

Carry shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’m not waiting around for Binker, if Helga wants to kick his arse until he gets his head out of it, that’d be nice but I don’t have time to change every idiot alpha’s mind.”

“Just mine?” Keenan asked. He barely kept himself from flinching because it had come out wrong. He hadn’t meant to… “I mean, I’m glad you talked to me. Thanks… for that.”

But he’d blown it. He could tell at once when Carry dialled down to nothing, leaving him with just his body language and his voice. He wouldn’t look at Keenan and he couldn’t get away fast enough with a bland excuse about getting a refill when his glass was half full.

 

&

 

 _Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._ He wasn’t even tipsy yet, and he wanted to be as out of his mind as possible because he was too stupid to live. He just… He didn’t know what was wrong with him. Maybe the way Carry had suddenly dropped his shields completely at the end of the game had messed him up, had made him… If the closeness could send Carry into heat, maybe it could do something to him as well because it definitely wasn’t normal that he’d get a taste of Carry’s sweet caramel scent and lose all his common sense. Carry and he were teammates, and friends too—the kind of friends who pretended very well they didn’t want to sleep together because they knew they couldn’t really work out.

Only… It was getting harder to remember why it was such a terrible idea. The two times they’d spent heat together had worked, hadn’t they? Carry had been able to play, the sex had been amazing…

And he’d woken up the next morning and freaked Carry out by making him breakfast like they were dating. But he could... except of course he couldn't. He couldn't sleep with someone he cared about and not show it in the little ways. Even if he had been stupid enough to do that to himself, Carry wouldn't accept it.

It was for the best really. It was just hard to spend so much time together, especially with the bond. And Keenan _was_ lonely, it was normal to feel it more keenly right after a relationship ended. He missed Amalia’s scent on his clothes, around his flat… The whole place felt empty now—and possibly his insticts were even more fucked up because she’s been an omega and a part of him had expected… Well, he’d expected them to last—instinct or no instincts—and now… He needed time. And some distance from Carry.

And a goddamned holiday. That would be perfect, a holiday far from Carry, somewhere sunny where he could take his shirt off and girls would be happy to sit with him and buy him drinks. He’d spent weeks like that: the beach, the ocean, always someone warming his bed when darkness fell.

It was four days until they played the Salamanders, and five days after that they would be playing the Titans again. It was crazy because the Salamanders were objectively a much more solid team, but of course it was hard to ignore the Titans in the horizon.

He knew they could win their fifth match, send the bastards away with so few points they’d have no chance unless they bested both the Hurricanes and the Salamanders themselves. Hades, if the Flames could get close to the Hurricanes, why would the Titans be a problem?

It made him wonder… It made him believe. It was hard not to when they were in the finals again after so long, when his line was as close to magical as any modern guy could believe was possible, when…

He had just to remember it was worth it. Hockey was worth it.

Especially if he could wipe the ice with the Titans.

 

&

 

Keenan could understand why Marco Ferreira might be pissed enough to punch his lights out. He _had_ stolen the puck off the guy without even turning to look at him—Carry’s very helpful directions—and he’d scored almost across the whole of the ice without anyone stopping him. The TV stations were calling it a miracle and Keenan wasn’t sure they weren’t right. It had been a move born out of desperation because both his wings were too tightly guarded by the Salamanders d-people, but somehow the sheer insanity of the move had paid off.

For once, nobody had asked him about omega rights in the interviews. He’d needed an interpreter but it was close enough to Spanish that he knew it really hadn’t come up. And the word “omega” was the same all over Europe anyway, a gift from the Romans and their stupid trinity.

Ferreira looked up from his phone—a modern contraption with a flat exposed screen—when Keenan opened the changing room door.

“Hello,” he said slowly.

Keenan wondered if the linguistic barrier would get him in more or less trouble.

“Hey, you wanted to talk?” he asked, making an effort not to rush. He had done his three language requirements in school—Spanish, German, Russian—but he hadn’t really cared about it, not even when coaches had warned him that he’d play with teammates from all over and make a fool of himself in foreign news.

“Thank you for coming out,” Ferreira said. He looked blank and his shields were pretty damn low, Keenan noticed, but there was no hint of anger in grassy scent.

“Um, sure, no problem.”

Ferreira glanced around, straightened his shoulders and put the phone away. “I—Well, I would like some advice,” he said at last in markedly accented English. He met Keenan’s eyes—an alpha to an equal, not a challenge. “About omegas.”

“Oh, I—I don’t know if…”

“You speak about them,” the Salamander defender pointed out. “For them.”

“Yes, well, I—I was trying to help. But I’m not sure I can give advice.”

“Your girlfriend is happy?” he asked.

Keenan exhaled and turned away. It was a show of weakness but he didn’t give a fuck. “She broke up with me.”

“Oh, so you don’t…”

“I don’t know shit about what omegas want, no,” he agreed.

“No, I mean, I thought you were going to bond her.”

That startled Keenan into looking back. “What? No, we just… we were dating. For a little bit.”

“Dating…” The other alpha repeated slowly. It was a foreign word to him but clearly his English was more than fine.

“I know it’s not traditional, but it’s good. I mean, what if we had bonded and then she had hated that I wanted to speak up for omega rights? We’d have been stuck: either I made her unhappy or I made myself unhappy.”

“Now you are happy? Alone?”

He pursed his lips and swallowed, trying hard not to rise to the challenge. “I will be. There will be someone else. And she will be too, she is free to make the choices she needs to make, to become the person she wants to be. That is better than a relationship.”

Ferreira sighed, looking away. “Me… My omega, we just bonded.”

He didn’t say more and Keenan couldn’t resist asking, “Are you happy now?”

The other alpha gave him a look and for the first time Keenan realised the guy had to be Sven’s age—the right age for an alpha to bond because they weren’t too far from retirement—and felt a little childish. “It isn’t like they say,” he admitted.

But Keenan didn’t really need to hear any more. He was so out of his depth it wasn’t even funny. “Listen, man, I’m not your guy for this. But I think I know someone. I could get you in touch with them. I mean, I gotta ask them first, but…” he shrugged and pointed at Ferreira’s pocket. “I could give you my number and if you call me tomorrow, I’ll get to it.”

Ferreira stood still for long enough Keenan started reconsidering his chances of being punched—and the guy might have been a little old but he was _solid_ —and then he took out his phone and wrote down the number Keenan gave him. He offered his hand afterwards and they shook, eyes on each other because of course any other alphas ultimately a thread, but also, Keenan thought, because they’d talked, for real, not just the bullshit small chat.

Neither of them knew what the fuck they were doing, but they were trying and they were trying to help. It might not work, but it wasn’t little.

 

&

 

Ferreira didn’t call. It wasn’t Keenan’s problem, of course. In fact, strictly speaking he shouldn’t have been socializing with a player from a rival team during the season. It wasn’t forbidden or anything absurd like that, naturally, but people were people and the people who were trying to take away your chances at the cup weren’t welcome to show up to your parties.

Still, it felt off. Approaching another alpha and admitting you didn’t know something as serious as how to treat your omega wasn’t a joke—it had to have cost Ferreira a lot of gritting his teeth against the urge to posture and dominate. Taking that into account, he’d been almost friendly, really.

But now it was six in the afternoon back in London and Keenan was getting sleepy after an intense morning and afternoon practices—no bond, just hard physical work, again and again until coach said enough. And it seemed like Ferreira wouldn’t bother… He put the TV on mute and reached for his phone, scrolling down until he found the right name.

He’d considered saving it under some sort of alias, but as far as he knew they were doing nothing wrong, plus, he had at least two distant relatives called Vithusha.

She picked up fairly quickly. “Mx Rebel,” she greeted.

Keenan snorted. “I’m still waiting for that surprise you promised me.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” she said a tad shortly.

“Reporters have stopped asking me about it.”

“Maybe that’s because _Paul Sire_ went on national television yesterday to talk about what a coincidence it was that there was an omega in two of the teams that have made it to the finals and what a pity it was only four teams in the league have an omega starter.”

“Oh,” Keenan exhaled. “Carry—” He cut himself off, but it was too late. He hoped it wouldn’t sound too odd that he called his omega teammate by his first name. “Well, he said he would. Carry’s expecting people to ask and then he’ll say Sire was his inspiration to get into the sport and how important it was to have an omega role model.”

“Damn,” she said, tsking. “That’s good. That’s… that’s really good. Was that Johnson’s idea?”

“Um, well,” he stopped. “I don’t know if I should say. I mean, Carry told me, but…”

“Yeah,” she agreed at once. “I get it. What if you gave them my number?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s why I called,” Keenan suddenly remembered. “Not for Carry or… For an alpha, he stopped me after a game, asked if I had any advice about how to manage with his bonded. I mean, I know you’re not a counselling service, but…”

“You don’t have anyone else to ask?” she offered, sounding weary. “That’s another problem we are trying to work on. If you are an alpha or an omega and you are not happy being traditional, then you are on your own. There’s practically no information outside the leaflets doctors give out and those all imply there’s something wrong with you if you don’t feel okay being what you are told…”

“Fuck, I never thought about that. But you are right, at school—”

“And at work, at the doctor’s, even at the bank an omega gets asked if they have an alpha.”

“Because they’d get access to their accounts?” Keenan asked, feeling it like a heavy weight in his stomach. An omega would have access to their alpha’s accounts too, if they were bonded, but he was young enough to remember he hadn’t been asked when he’d set up his account. An alpha was expected to embrace his responsibilities. He wasn’t sure if the assumption was that omegas weren’t responsible enough to remember or that they’d try to lie about it.

“Yes, but so would a beta spouse,” Vithusha pointed. “It’s… anyway, we don’t have anything set up, per se, but I do have some colleagues that could talk to this alpha.”

“Great,” Keenan said, doing his best to sound grateful. It seemed a little silly to have called now, when Ferreira clearly wasn’t interested.

If Vithusha could tell, she decided not to comment. “Yeah, seems like you’ll be passing my number around like flyers,” she teased. “Maybe find me a nice beta girl besides all these desperate alphas and rebellious omegas, will you?”

The word ‘girl’ echoed in his brain like a beacon and he had to bite his tongue not to ask. “Mmm… How old are you?” he said instead. Just for something to say.

She laughed, sincere and wholehearted. “Why do you care? It’s fine for me to date a beta but a few years make a difference?”

“I guess not,” Keenan agreed easily. “My auntie’s wife passed a couple years ago, maybe I should introduce you.”

“Oh, gods, I have created a monster, haven’t I?”

“Call me when you can give me my surprise,” he replied and took great satisfaction in hanging up.

 

&

 

And then the next morning when he checked the time in his phone after practice, there was a missed call from an unknown number. And a text with no signature that needed none.

[Hey, can I have that number?]

“Wow, what’s that grin for?” Santiago asked from his side.

Keenan looked up, suddenly unsteady. He didn’t know how to explain this to someone who didn’t know everything he’d been doing, everything he was trying to accomplish. But then again, why shouldn’t he share that? His interview had been way more public than the locker room, and he knew his team had his back. “Well, there was this alpha who wanted some advice about omegas…”

Alarski whistled, loud and suggestive, which made Thomas laugh.

Keenan rolled his eyes at their antics. “ _Relationship_ advice,” he clarified primly. “And anyway, I said I wouldn’t know, what with Amalia dumping me.”

Santiago’s face fell at that and Keenan waved it away. “It’s fine. It was just… It’s for the best.”

His rookie didn’t seem sold but he didn’t say anything.

Fortunately Thomas came to the rescue. “So what just happened?”

“I gave him my number but he hadn’t called to get the info… Well, there’s these people I have been talking to, about omega rights, and I thought they might know a little more than me,” he added with a wry smile. “But if he didn’t call me, there was no point. And he just texted that he wants their number.”

“Atta, boy,” Thomas praised, stepping forward for a fist bump Keenan gladly shared.

“So you are basically the worst alpha guru in the history of ever,” Alarski pointed out. “But you are happy because you can give people the right number?”

“Hey,” Keenan met his eyes, dropping the smile. “Getting the right number can change everything.”

His goalie’s eyes widened a little and Keenan thought he might have freaked him out a little with the sudden shift in tone.

“Stop scaring the rookies,” Carry demanded, slamming his own locker door across the room. “We are all very impressed with your communication skills, don’t worry.” He said it dryly but he was also still open enough after the last fifteen minutes of practice—Thomas insisted on getting some ice time with the bond every day—that Keenan could easily tell he was being perfectly sincere.

 _Paul Sire_ , Keenan thought all of sudden. He’d gone back and watched the interview, which had exploded all over the media the previous night. Had Carry seen it? He’d always seemed very aware of what people were saying about him, and he’d been expecting Blassic’s move...

“We are not scared,” Alarski said then, startling Carry into turning to look at him. Keenan saw their gazes lock. “You don’t need to dumb it down for us, or pretend it’s not important. We—We got your back, you know that, don’t you?”

Carry’s face drained of all emotion like a screen being turned off. He didn’t seem capable of answering Alarski, so Keenan stepped forward and put his hand on the goalie’s arm. “We do get that,” he assured him. “But it’s a lot to get. If you aren’t in the middle of it.”

Alarski half turned his way but refused to let Carry out of his line of sight and Keenan understood: he knew _Keenan_ believed him, but he more than suspected than Carry didn’t.

It was probably true, too. Alarski just didn’t know their left winger well enough to know why.

“Thank you,” Carry managed to get out before Keenan could think of another way of diffusing the situation. “I appreciate it.”

“So do you want us to say anything?” Moliere asked. Keenan almost jumped. Sven was out with the coaches and he’d forgotten the other veteran player was around.

Carry gaped at him and Keenan could feel his confusion through the bond—a miasmic combination of distrust and hope. He shook his head. “Just that, if they ask. That you got our back, that…” He swallowed. “That you support our right to choose.”

“Cool,” Patel said, and some others echoed his approval. “So… Asado for dinner?”

 

&

 

“So that went well,” Keenan said once they were alone. Santiago lived in the same apartment complex as Carry and Thomas but he’d somehow managed to pick up in a _restaurant_ and gone home with his new friend.

“I didn’t realise you were going to tell everyone,” Thomas said from his side. He was balancing awkwardly on his hoverboard since he was keeping up with Keenan and Carry’s walking pace. They weren’t meant to use them but his ankle had been giving him a little trouble since he’d changed out of his skates that afternoon.

“Not like it’s a secret when I’m talking to reporters,” Keenan pointed out a little testily.

“Hey,” Thomas raised his hands and Carry promptly reached over and stabilized him. “Just saying!”

“It’s fine, Keenan,” the omega said and Keenan was ashamed to feel himself relax at once. “It’s not like you told them about the bond.”

Keenan clenched his hands, keeping his eyes firmly ahead. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that was what it was, or even like he didn’t use the word himself, but it was… It was different hearing it from Carry. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

He wasn’t sure if it bothered him because it wasn’t a true bond, or because he wanted it to be.

“So you two planning to start a charity or something?” Thomas asked, happily oblivious to the tension—or pretending really well. “I could hook you up with Uri, he could tell you how it goes.”

“A charity?” Carry asked. “For what?”

“Well… dunno, you could offer legal advice to omegas? And, like, if they got discriminated you could defend them?”

“That sounds like what these people I’m talking to are trying to do,” Keenan explained. “But I’m not sure they are registered as a charity, I think they are just, like, meeting up and making shit happen.”

“Well, I don’t know that much, but if you register as a charity, you don’t pay taxes on pretty much anything and you can apply for grants as long as you prove you are using them.”

“Sounds like you are learning a lot from this alpha of yours,” Carry commented slyly. Keenan caught him smiling in Thomas direction, eyes bright under the dim solar-powered streetlamps the newer neighbourhoods were made to install.

Maybe it was for the best. For the planet, and for Keenan’s peace of mind.

Thomas gave Carry a toothy grin, then shrugged and added in a sultry whisper, “Oh, you have _no_ idea.”

Carry stumbled a little as he started laughing and Keenan had to repress the impulse to try to take hold of his arm. Thomas, even on his hoverboard, was more likely to succeed.

And there was the little matter of Keenan not touching Carry outside of emergencies or the ice.

He couldn’t be forgetting these things. Not now, not when they were playing the Titans in three days.

The Titans. If only he could think of how to fix that… After all, he’d never had the impulse to drop his hockey stick to reach for Carry. If there was one place where it was safe to be with his left winger, it was the ice. Just where they belonged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have an important question for you all. What characters from Cracking Ice would you like to see side-stories about?
> 
> Some options, but feel free to name anyone and why you think they are interesting!  
> * Thomas & Uri  
> * James Blassic  
> * Diamond Johnson (no relation)  
> * Vithusha  
> * Amalia  
> * Tzeera  
> * Moliere & Schvills  
> * Keenan's parents' epic romance


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not to brag... but I think this one is worth the wait! I have just realised I have to rewrite chapter 65 completely and modify previous chapters to fit everything together like it should... so I could use some comments if you have time/are inclined :D

**&** **Chapter 55: Cartwright**

“Hey,” Keenan said, daring to lean against Carry’s locker all of two feet away. Maybe he was too depressed for protocol, Carry certainly didn’t give any more of a fuck than usual. He couldn’t believe the Titans had won against the Salamanders. Sure, the Flames had and the previous year they’d qualified ninth in the league, but the Flames had the miracle of their bond; what did the Titans have after dropping Carry like he was so much garbage? Puccio and Lerroux had tried using their own awareness of each other on the ice and done well enough for a bit, but even if their coaches knew about it, it wasn’t like they were going to let Puccio play offense for long. He couldn’t score more than the average rookie, for one, and at this stage they couldn't afford to miss on any points.

He glanced up at Keenan, not saying anything because there was nothing left to say: Binker had just gone both through the platitudes and the practicalities of preparing themselves to face their rivals. Carry agreed with the latter and saw the necessity of the former. If Keenan wanted either from him, he was out of luck.

Irritatingly, Keenan didn’t seem either concerned or upset at the news they’d just got. “I thought we could watch some tape this afternoon,” he offered, shifting in place and swipping the room as if anyone else was included in the conversation. About half the team had left after Binker had finished his speech, some to get drunk or high together, some just wanting space in their own heads—like Carry did.

“Of their game?” Carry asked, maybe a little sharply. It wasn’t like they were forbidden from watching recent footage, and in a way, it was a good strategy. Carry had dutifully watched all the games the Salamanders and the Hurricanes had played this season, too. For the Titans he’d relied on his intimate knowledge of their strategies instead—but he preferred not to tell Keenan that he didn’t want to see them from the outside, see how well they moved without him, like he’d never existed. 

Like he didn’t matter.

Keenan’s brow furrowed a little and he shook his head. “No, actually. But we can watch their game too, I guess?” He opened the bag he had hanging from his shoulder and started going through its contents as he explained, “I have collected some stuff I think you should see.”

“Okay,” Carry agreed, sighing a little but knowing Keenan was right. They couldn’t be too prepared. And if Keenan had other stuff to show him, then maybe they wouldn’t get around to the Titans-Salamanders game.

“Did you ask Thomas?” Their linemate had gone over to medical to have his ankle checked—the doctors had said it was just a light sprain but you couldn’t be too careful when you put your body under extreme physical stress practically every day. 

“Um, not yet,” Keenan said. Carry was silent; he wasn’t used to recognizing someone’s discomfort so easily. Most of the time, he had to give up and decide that if they were truly that uncomfortable, they’d say something. But with Keenan, he had no doubts. It was as obvious as if he were carrying a sign—or leaving his mind wide open. But that didn’t tell him why. He frowned: had it meant to be something for them to do alone? Keenan was no longer dating, of course, but it’d been months since—

“Can I ask Sven or will that annoy you?” Keenan checked.

And Carry made the excutive decision to let it go. He got to his feet, shrugging. “I don’t even know what we are watching.”

Keenan huffed. “Just meet me in the conference room next to the vending machine,” he demanded and turned to go.

Carry almost asked him, but then something held him back. He had to spend two hours twice a day with Keenan and he’d just agreed to at least an extra one—the last thing he needed was to make it even longer. Not after so long without a heat.

It didn’t matter, it would just be a few more weeks before the finals were over, and then, one way or another, he’d be free to do what he wanted.

&

“Sven had a thing with Helga,” Keenan explained as soon as Carry walked into the meeting room.

“Okay,” Carry agreed, eyeing the food on the table and the twinkling stars screensaver. It looked like his centre had prepared well. He left a chair between them and sat closer to the TV, then took out a notebook and pen out of his backpack. He wondered if he could ask about Thomas again without being offensive. It wasn’t like he was going to— 

This was work, and Keenan would never jeopardize the team for something silly like a crush. Even if he still felt something, which there was no reason to assume he did—the bond made them physically attracted to each other, nothing else was guaranteed. Or permanent.

“Thomas said he’d come,” Keenan said then, “but he called Uri because they had a date and he needed help with something. He’ll be back… Well, he didn’t say.” He was rearranging the snacks according to an organizational system that Carry couldn’t work out. Maybe Keenan noticed him watching because he pushed one of the smoothies towards Carry. It was strawberry, cherry and banana and cold enough that he must have gone to fetch them recently.

Carry took it and sipped, focusing on the sweet flavor and not Keenan’s beach scent—barely there no matter how much Carry’s brain strained to find it. “It’s fine, what did you want to show me?”

Keenan smiled at that, bright and easy. His shields were up but Carry still found himself clenching his fists to keep his own in place. He wanted… He glanced at the screen and Keenan pressed play. He didn’t mention the sudden tension in the air.

It was stupid; they’d been alone loads of times since sleeping together and nothing untoward had happened. What reason did he have to imagine that this was about anything but hockey?

And then, because it always did, the puck caught his attention. It was the middle of a game, he saw at once. The next thing he noticed was that it was Carry himself on the ice and he was wearing Titan yellow instead of the Flames’ red and black. The wrongness of it made him lean back a little and Keenan chose that moment to pause the play.

“Did you see that?”

Carry tried to think back to the last few seconds. “I fumbled that pass?”

“Yeah,” Keenan agreed happily. “Now, watch this.” He closed the video and opened a new one fast enough Carry didn’t even see the title.

The dark red jerseys put him at ease before he realized it was a game old enough that he was on the ice with Patel. The video was short enough that the pass came almost immediately—it wasn’t as embarrassing as the one he’d given to Lerroux, but nothing to write home about either.

He dared a glance at Keenan, not knowing how to voice the questions in his mind. His linemate shook his head. “Just watch,” he instructed.

So Carry did.

The next pass didn’t come so soon, instead the video started with the face-off—Keenan this time, with Carry and Thomas at his sides—and kept going as they moved forward slowly overwhelming the Centaurs defense with smooth, economical passes between the three of them. 

Carry frowned, trying to do the math in his head, but he’d played that game more than half a year ago. In fact, he was pretty sure it might have been one of the first games he played in Keenan’s line. “When…?” he murmured.

The figures on the screen stilled at once and when he turned to Keenan, he found him smiling. “A while ago. That was our third game together as a line.”

Carry couldn’t help it, he glanced back at the screen. Third? They’d played well together from the beginning but by the third game, they hadn’t been aware they could use the bond. And Thomas hadn’t known.

“I have one more,” Keenan added. He didn’t wait for Carry’s go ahead, just opened the next file.

Carry watched in silence, noting the practice jerseys but not letting it distract him from the game. Patel’s line was easily overwhelmed but Moliere and Schvills were an impassable wall behind them. And Carry and Keenan weren’t using the bond at all—it became obvious when Carry miscalculated Keenan’s position by half a metre and Thomas wasn’t there to make up for it. He watched, spellbound, as if the scores would count for anything when he didn’t even remember that particular day at practice. Moliere got the puck out of the goal area easily and Thomas caught it and passed it to Carry—their beta had always had the easiest time to playing without the bond, of course—and this time, Carry took the two seconds he needed to locate his centre before smoothly sliding it over to him. Keenan flashed forward around Bauer—the fastest forward in the opposite line—and when he got to the other side, Carry was already waiting for the puck. He slid it past Schvills and Binker so smoothly it was almost scary to watch.

Suddenly, he remembered that moment, the irrepressible joy, and how he’d almost tripped over his own skates to keep himself from jumping into Keenan’s arms. He swallowed, looking away from the screen.

Keenan laughed next to him. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I couldn’t cut that out, it’s just too good. You score a goal like that and then…”

“Yeah, a study in contrasts,” Carry said dryly. He looked up and gestured at the screen. “What’s all this?”

“Progress,” Keenan said, sounding a little surprised. “Your progress. Since the Titans. I have more footage of you with them, really. But I figured… Well, this is enough, isn’t it? You have improved so much in the last eight months…”

Carry met his eyes, chest tight. “You—” He glanced away, heart suddenly thundering. He tried

to gauge how open his shields were. He was feeling too much. He couldn’t let

Keenan—

“Carry?” came the soft question. “Are you—?”

 “We knew that already,” he cut him off. “I mean, that’s why we are using the bond, isn’t it?”

“We weren’t.”

“What?”

“All these videos are of us playing without,” the alpha explained. “I mean, I guess at the beginning we were at, like, a level 2 without meaning to, but we weren’t trying to use it, not any of these times. I made sure.”

Carry swallowed, then reached for the smoothie again and took a long pull—like it was something a lot stronger the vitamins and sugar. “Okay.”

“I just wanted you to see that you don’t have anything to worry about when we play the Titans. You are an amazing player in your own right, and even if you can’t open up in front of them—”

“I will,” Carry spit out.

Keenan didn’t try to say anything else, just let it rest between them: a silence heavy enough to drown in.

Except it wasn’t the silence drowning Carry: it was the opposite of silent in his head. Because this was hockey and Keenan was clearly trying to get him to play the Titans the best he could instead of becoming an insecure mess like he had any time he’d faced them on the ice, but… it had to have taken time and effort to collect all those clips, and even more telling, it had to mean something that he remembered whether they’d been using the bond or not in each instance.

Or maybe what was telling was how badly Carry wanted for it to mean something other than that his linemate wanted to win the finals.

And he couldn’t ask.

He’d told Keenan he wasn’t interested in being wanted for the way he smelled, but if… If Keenan knew how he moved on the ice, and remembered how he took his smoothies, and took care to give him what he needed… That wasn’t instinct. Or maybe it was, not Keenan’s but Carry’s. He was desperate enough for an alpha that he’d distorted a practical gesture for the good of the team into… into something it wasn’t.

“Hey,” Thomas said from the doorway and Carry startled so badly he overturned his glass. The reddish mixture spilled all over the desk and onto the carpet.

“Fuck,” Carry swore, getting to his feet and looking around for a tissue, a cloth. He growled and pulled his t-shirt over his head to protect the carpet—both unhygienic and impossible to maintain in a room given any type of practical use—as Keenan reached forward and straightened the glass.

“Whoa,” Thomas said. “Sorry, man. Here, I have some tissues.” 

He heard them sorting out the mess above him as he held his shirt under the liquid dripping over the table’s edge. 

“You can come up now,” Keenan said after a minute and Carry glanced up at the table to check before he did. 

He looked down. His shirt was a sticky mess and so were his hands. “Ugh.” He sighed. “I need to get a new shirt, maybe shower…”

“I can lend you one,” Thomas offered at once. “I can—”

“I have spare ones,” Carry interrupted, walking past him without looking up from his own hands—he couldn’t let the smoothie on the shirt drip now or it’d be pointless. “Just… Get Keenan to catch you up.”

He couldn’t close the door behind himself but he hurried down the corridor out of the conference rooms as fast as he could. Goddamned carpet everywhere and it didn’t even cross his mind that there were also toilets with working sinks all over the place until he got to the changing rooms and realized he’d left his keys in his bag. He let the t-shirt drop to the floor and pressed his forehead against the red wall that went on so many of the Flames’ publicity shots.

He just needed to breathe for a moment. Just that. He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, but if he could just take a second…

He got about thirty before the sound of clinking keys forced him to straightened and face the music.

Thomas wasn’t looking at him. He was concentrating on opening the door to the changing room like he couldn’t have done it blindfolded and drunk. “Come on in,” he said easily, not giving any sign that he noticed that Carry was a mess in more ways than one.

Carry followed him in anyway. He’d take any mercy the universe wanted to show him—right now, he needed all the help he could get.

“You should take another shower,” his right-winger told him. “Or you’ll smell like a vitamin supplement all day. Then you’ll leave the smell in your bed and pick it up again the next day. Definitely not an image you want to present when you meet those arseholes you played with.”

The idea of meeting Puccio smelling like a fruit salad was more amusing than anything else at the moment, which probably meant there was something wrong with him. Normally, he couldn’t even think the name without wanting to hurt someone. Sometimes Puccio, sometimes himself for being stupid enough to trust him.

The shower helped: the heat and the white noise and the time to be just a body, to pay attention to each unwinding muscle and even to the scratches and aches—reminders of pushing himself hard.

“You look a little more human now,” Thomas commented approvingly when he came out. “Didn’t realise I gave you such a fright.”

Carry shrugged and went to his locker to get dressed. He toweled his hair once before dropping the towel in the communal laundry basket, then thumbed opened his locker and got fresh clothes and his wallet and keys out. Thomas allowed him the time to pull a new shirt over his head, shove his legs into his trousers’ legs and his feet into socks and shoes. It was only when he was done in less than three minutes that Carry realized he’d let his anxious need to get away waste the only justitication he’d had for delaying the conversation that was coming.

“I’m fine,” he tried. “You didn’t scare me that much, I just had a hard day and…” He shrugged.

“I asked Keenan to catch me up,” the beta said instead of responding.

Carry didn’t respond. He couldn’t think of anything to say, and it was pointless. Thomas wasn’t one for playing games: if he’d come to find him and waited around, he must have… “It was a good idea,” he offered.

“Yeah, but when I walked in you were white as a bleached flamingo.” 

Carry swallowed, then shivered as a droplet made its way down the back of his shirt. He reached for another small towel and buried his head in it. It bought him a few seconds, at least, and the relief of not having to look at Thomas in the face, too.

“Carry, whatever it is, you can tell me. I won’t… I won’t tell Keenan.”

He dropped the towel onto his lap to look at his linemate. “What?”

Thomas’sgreen eyes were worried. “It was sweet of him, and you freaked out. And you guys are compatible, and…” He stopped. “You said it didn’t matter that much, just being compatible. But does it matter if you both love hockey like crazy? And you take care of each other? And… you get each other. Because you are friends, aren’t you? I remember you called me to make sure he was okay after he gave that speech, and he—he looks after you to. So it can’t be just a biological thing.”

Carry watched him back, shivering a little and wondering if he was cold. Or in shock. “It has to be,” he told Thomas firmly.

“Why?”

“Why?” he echoed, voice escalating out of his control. Because he wanted to know why, too. He wanted to know why it had to be so difficult, why there were so many rules and restrictions and why other people could just do what they wanted and… “Because we are teammates, Kiuau,” he hissed. He took particular pleasure in saying Thomas’s foreign last name correctly. “And because I have a career I won’t give up for any alpha in the universe.”

“Keenan wouldn’t want you to give up hockey!”

Carry snorted. “Yeah, sure. And those instincts that have been pulling at us like crazy since we met have no say in the matter, of course.”

“Wait. Does this mean you want to?”

“I want hockey,” he gritted out. It was true. It was the only true thing he knew for certain was his and not an accident of his hormones or genetics or his family’s position. He loved hockey, and that was nothing to do with being an omega, that was simply Carry and a choice nobody had wanted him to make—much less stick with long enough to make a career out of it. “I want to win this final.” He smiled, suddenly feeling calmer—he’d only needed to remember the sweet focus of his blades on the ice, his body an instrument of the grace he saw in his mind. “I want to destroy the Titans the day after tomorrow.”

Thomas stared at him, lips slightly parted. “But…”

Carry shook his head. “Don’t let your hormones get to your head, mate. We can’t all afford to have our cake and eat it.” He got to his feet and picked up his wallet from the bench next to his linemate. “I will see you tomorrow.”

&

The coaches had insisted on travelling to Poland a day earlier despite the expense so they would not have to travel and play on the same day. It was a sensible decision; one Carry could hardly contest on the grounds of the country’s backwards policies towards the medical needs of minorities.

The escort agency had promised to try to get him samples of local alphas to the hotel but their resources in Poland weren't what they were back in England. For Carry, the local regulations on sexual services seemed straight out of the 56th century. You could walk down a backalley and pay someone desperate to eat to blow you in a corner, but you couldn’t actually hire someone who had been vetted for both a criminal record and STDs and invite them to your hotel room for a service that was medically necessary. 

The universe simple hated to waste a chance to screw him over, so he woke up panting not long after he managed to fall asleep. He felt so overheated his throat felt raw. He grappled around his bedside table in desperation and managed to drain the glass of water there with minimal damage to the bedding. Nothing beyond his own sweat, that’s it.

He rested his forehead on the pillow, taking stock of his body: the way he was burning up, sore all over and kind of nauseus, nipples and cock hard and needy. He was shaking so much he could barely think, but there was one thing he couldn't forget: the game.

They were playing the Titans. It was his last chance to prove to them they'd made a mistake dropping him—and of course it was heat that would make him miss it. The very reason they didn't want him. He gasped for breath, clutching at his sheets. He wasn’t only hard but slick too: both desperate to have something inside and so sick with dread and anger he could barely comprehend the arousal he felt.

He stumbled off the bed and into the shower—only realising he still had shirt on when the hot water soaked through it. It didn't matter, he stayed under it and turned the temperature down even as he started stripping his cock hard and fast, two fingers of his other hand shoved deep into his arse—not caring he could slip and fall at any time. Not caring about anything but making it stop. Just—Just stop. Even if only for a little while. Coming helped some. He took off the shirt and dropped it in the corner where it would be less of a hazard.

It took a toy and another orgasm before he could manage to get some biscuits open and a bit of coffee from the machine in the kitchenette to swallow them down with. Since they were staying for three days, the team had sprung for apart-hotels. He didn't bother with suppressants—the only thing he could use them for at this point was an overdose. It was clearly time to wean himself out of them so they would start working again. It was one hell of a lesson to learn at this point but he truly had had no way of predicting how his body would react if he kept taking suppressants while also spending hours each day with an alpha who was his one true pair.

He'd never made it this far into the season before and he’d never met someone like Keenan Avali—it was really one too many variables.

And he hadn’t thought. If he'd planned for this, he could have switched over to another brand—less effective and with a few side-effects, but better than nothing.

After the fourth time—his cock painful and his hole still hungry for cock—he picked up the phone.

"Carry?" Keenan said and Carry felt it run through him like he'd drank ice-water. His body knew his... It recognized this was an alpha who'd helped him through heat before, he thought. 

"Hey," he said and his voice came out like he'd dragged himself though broken glass.

"Hey," Keenan said back. "You sick? You sound—"

"Heat," Carry explained. He blinked and glanced around the room, feeling like somebody had turned the lights on all of sudden. He couldn't understand why but the world was coming into focus around him. There was no chance heat had run its course, but it felt... he felt better.

"Oh," Keenan said. He couldn't make his voice sound normal. Carry didn't blame him—any alpha would have been uncomfortable and Keenan... Well, Keenan had to remember very clearly what it was like. The pleasure had been real enough, Carry could admit, even if it hadn't been freely chosen by either of them. "I thought... um, the agency?"

"It's illegal here."

"Fuck!" Keenan spat, suddenly furious. “I— We can play without you.”

But it was a lie. If they played the Titans without Carry, they would lose. 

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let it happen knowing he had a choice.

But he couldn’t ask for this, either. It was too much. 

It was the same thing Keenan had already done twice, of course, but Carry had never asked. The first time, circumstance had shoved them together like hapless landlocked idiots in a tempestuous sea. And the second, he'd been so out of his mind that he'd sent Keenan a warning to stay away that could easily be read as an invitation. But this time, he could think clearly. He felt sick, but he was in control. He could ask Keenan to get him some over the counter sedatives. He could take a couple too many to make up for how overworked his metabolism was due to heat and...

And he'd wake up drenched in sweat and come—his body fighting to have what it needed even as his mind slept—and so sick and weak he wouldn't be able to get on the ice for at least a week. Six days too late to face the Titans.

He'd done it before.

He hadn't had a choice. Not really. And now... It didn't feel like a choice: between leaving Puccio to take their place in the league—like he'd taken so much from Carry already—and taking what Keenan had offered so sincerely, so devotedly.

“Please,” he managed, lips trembling. Asking hurt more than heat, he thought. Not because he felt like an omega when he did—weak like they said, needy and depending on an alpha to look after him—but because it was a betrayal.

He was supposed to be Keenan's friend and he was asking to...

Keenan exhaled. “You want vodka—?”

“You,” Carry gritted out, angry despite himself. He hadn't said, of course. But it felt... It was already so difficult...

Keenan gasped. “Carry...” 

Carry curled up on the bed, putting the phone on the pillow next to his head and gritting his teeth through a wave of longing. Whatever effect Keenan's voice had was wearing off, as if his body had let him take only enough of a breath to call for help. “I want to play,” he managed to get out. “I... I need to finish what—”

"Fuck," Keenan spat, angry or frustrated, Carry wasn't sure without the bond—not with the way his vision was swimming even as his fingers twitched. "I'm coming."

Carry thought he dozed for a bit after that, but he wasn't sure, time had lost its thread for him. The next thing he knew was there was someone knocking on his door and he could already smell their scent. Familiar brine and hot sand tugging at him until he got to his feet and went to open the door without checking who it was.

Keenan stood there: dark eyes, pupils dilated, and cheeks flushed. "You—" His eyes slid down Carry's body but it wasn't until he took a step forward and took hold of his elbow that Carry realised he'd never put clothes on after his shower. He gasped a little at the sensation, swaying until Keenan's other hand shot out to keep him upright.

Keenan held his gaze steady for a moment. Carry didn’t know what the question was, but the answer was yes. 

Keenan leaned down and Carry's hands were on his hair, pulling his mouth hard against his own. Wet, delicious heat and Keenan's weight like the anchor to keep him from flying away from his own skin as they rolled onto the floor. Their legs tangled, their cocks hard—even if Keenan’s was still trapped in his clothes.

Carry didn't realise he was speaking until Keenan put his fingers to his lips, supporting himself on an elbow to look him in the face. “Shh... Don't. I want to.”

Carry swallowed, blinking to clear his vision and realising, to his shock, that his eyes were full of tears. Keenan kissed his cheek, thumb sweeping gently under his eye. “Come to the bed," he said and Carry let him hoist him to his feet and half carry him to the bedroom.

Keenan laid him down gently and for once, Carry let himself watch him undress: the spectacle of his muscled torso coming unveiled—his arms a machine polished to perfection. His hole clenched hard at the sight of Keenan's cock springing free—proud and dark with blood.

For Carry.

He knew it wasn't really for him. It was just heat, hormones. It wasn't... He didn't care. He needed this, he thought, viciously angry as he pulled Keenan on top of him. Keenan broke his fall with a huff and imprecation.

But he didn't have much to object to once his cock was pressed against the soft skin of Carry's belly, and much less when Carry lifted his knees to his shoulders—leaving himself open and exposed. 

"Fuck me," he demanded, voice going dark with something he wouldn’t have been able to name.

And Keenan—the all-powerful alpha who could have him on his knees with a word—leaned down and pressed their lips together. He kissed Carry slow and deep as he aligned his cock with Carry's hole—as if offering him a taste of what was to come. 

Carry kissed him back, left too open by his need to pretend he didn't want to. It was him fucking Keenan's mouth when the alpha's cock finally breached him, head sliding easily into his slick passage.

Carry shuddered hard, head falling back onto the pillows. He met Keenan's wide eyes on top of him—protectiveness, desire, tenderness, fear—and recognized his own feelings on his face.

Instinct would have excused him, but he lifted his hips into the penetration because it felt like Keenan was much deeper than his arse. Keenan whimpered, then bent down for another kiss, almost violent—as if he wanted so much more it could only be obtained with bites. He shoved into Carry like he'd lost all self-control and Carry gave as good as he got, pulling on his too long hair and digging his heels into Keenan's back for leverage, fucking himself on Keenan's cock like he planned on using it to break himself in half.

Maybe he already had, he thought in his delirium, it wasn't possible he was expected to go on without this. To just...

Keenan whined and pressed him further into the bedding, shifting his hips just enough to hit Carry's prostate with every jab.

Carry jerked in his arms, his shout only half muffled by his lover's mouth, and clenched hard around the burning length buried deep. Keenan echoed him, pressing his lips to Carry's cheek and shaking as Carry's come painted both their torsos. 

Keenan rode out his orgasm by going perfectly still in his arms, almost like it was too much stimuli for him to process. Carry clenched around him one more time, pleasure so intense it was starting to edge on pain, and the alpha made a low, wounded sound and said his name like a plea, “Carry...”

Carry felt him coming—the copious amounts of alpha seed shooting deep into him—and his body relaxed under his friend's weight. Just like evolution had intended. If Keenan...

Keenan rested his forehead against his collarbone for a moment longer, waiting for his body to come under his command again, Carry hoped. And then he pulled back, kneeling with Carry's legs spread around his hips, and checked his face. He opened his mouth but signed ‘water' instead, then shuffled back, withdrawing from Carry's hole.

Carry glanced away, feeling the emptiness like a wound. He was suddenly cold. A part of him wanted Keenan to stay close—a part of him wanted Keenan to knot and bite him, sealing their bond forever and trapping Carry in the gilded cage he had been told all his life he was meant to love.

Keenan went to the minifridge for cold water and knelt by the bed instead of sitting on it—even though no one would have contested his right to it.

“Come on,” he said in a raspy tone, and Carry's head snapped towards him at the realisation that he hadn't drank. He took a huge gulp of water from the glass the alpha was holding out to him just so he could speak, “Drink, you idiot,” he demanded, pushing the glass towards him. 

He almost spilled the contents down Keenan's chest before his centre pulled it away and drank, deep and needy. Some of it spilled past his lips and tickled down to the dark hair of his chest, glistening like pearls and making Carry swallow. 

He felt a warm palm on his cheek guiding his face up. There was still a little water left, so he drank, tilting his head as Keenan directed him to. Closing his eyes as he did because he was tired, and overwhelmed and it was so—

The blanket was a relief against cold he’d forgotten he was feeling. “Just sleep for a bit,” came the soft suggestion and, for once, Carry was glad to listen to an alpha. 

&

It could not have been long because he was still hard and wet when he woke next.

“Hey,” Keenan called out. He was wearing a robe and he smelled... like himself. Not like Carry. He must have showered.

Perfectly reasonable thing to do, especially to order all that food that was on the table in the reception room.

“Did the smell wake you up?” he asked, almost cheerful. “I figured I should leave you rest if you could.”

Carry glanced down at himself—he smelled of Keenan, and dried come and slick—and saw a scratch on his arm but nothing more. Of course Keenan hadn't bitten him—even if he could have got away with it as long as he didn't also knot.

He contemplated the energy required to make it to the shower and back out, then rolled off the bed and yanked the sheet along, wrapping it around himself like a badly-fitting toga as he walked towards the open door of the reception room.

He didn't think Keenan meant to stare—maybe it was just an alpha's need to know where a fertile omega was—but he didn't look away until Carry took a seat, close enough he could feel the heat of his skin though the cotton. He licked his lips. “Coffee?” he offered, pointing at the carafe.

It was probably best to avoid any stimulants, but what did it matter? If heat was over, he'd crash anyway, and if it wasn't—and the tickling sensation under his skin was probably the only warning he'd get—coffee couldn't send him any higher.

Keenan tensed a little when he nodded, then proceeded to efficiently prepare the drink just like Carry preferred. He slid it carefully across the table, holding on just long enough for Carry to get a chance to brush their fingers together as he took it.

He sipped slowly, letting the sweetness of the milk overwhelm the saltiness of Keenan's scent for an instant. Keenan watched him for a moment, then pushed the plate of sandwiches towards Carry. “Eat something.”

Carry mustered the energy to give him an unimpressed look, but choose a cucumber sandwich anyway. The first bite proved a mistake because his body suddenly informed him that he was starving and he almost choked on the rest of it.

Keenan's hand shot out and took hold of his wrist. “Hey!”

Carry flushed and tried to yank his hand away. Only to discover he couldn't manage—he couldn't tell if it was a matter of status or physics but it made him so furious it was all he could do to keep himself from sweeping the whole spread to the floor.

“Let. Me. Go.”

Keenan took back his hand like he suspected he'd lose it otherwise.

“Sorry,” he said at once, so sincere it almost made Carry want to lash out again. What right did he have to be so...? “I didn't—”

“Thank you,” he interrupted. 

“What?”

“Thank you, for coming, for... for helping.” The words tasted like ash in his mouth, right as they were. Maybe because they were right.

 “You don't owe me a thing,” Keenan said, almost angry. “It was... It was amazing, for one, and it was for both of us. I need you on the ice, remember?”

Carry shrugged, looking away. What could he say to that? It was true. It also wasn't the point. 

It was ridiculous, but it felt like something had been taken from him. He'd been trying not to think about it, but he'd wanted this for himself. He'd wanted to feel Keenan's hands on his skin because it was his. He'd wanted those kisses to mean... No, they didn't need to mean anything, just to be his. To be earned, not owed. Not an exchange but a gift.

He had wanted to give Keenan his own gift in turn.

Keenan leaned across the table and hooked fingers over Carry's on the table, a touch so tentative, so easy to reject, that Carry just looked up at him. It wasn't any kind of attempted claim, it was... a question?

Keenan had only touched him once outside of heat before and it had been necessary to bring him out of the almost catatonic state in which he’d ended after they'd played fast and loose with the bond.

They were still practically naked, Carry realised. It hadn't seemed that important when he'd thought they couldn't touch. When Keenan had tried to keep him from eating, all he had cared about had been the affront to his autonomy, but now he wondered what effect the contact would have on his body. 

“It’s okay,” Keenan said. “It won't make your heat come back, I have been reading. That never happens, apparently it's a big problem if—” He cut himself off.

But Carry didn't need him to finish that sentence. The only time an omega could possibly wish their heat to return was if they were trying to conceive a child. His stomach revolted, twisting in a mix of terror and anxiety. He exhaled, reminding himself of the implant.

“Carry,” Keenan sounded unsure and Carry saw he'd lifted his other hand towards Carry's face but wasn't touching him yet. He wanted that touch as badly as he'd needed it earlier, but whatever he'd imagined he felt earlier... this wasn't heat. 

He couldn't ask for even more, not when he wouldn’t— Nothing had changed; what he’d told Thomas was still true. He wouldn’t give up his freedom, and it didn’t matter if Keenan wouldn’t ask him to—here was proof that Keenan was as susceptible to their needs of their bodies as he was. He just had less reason to resist.

He obviously didn’t even want to.

Keenan's fingertips brushed his cheek and Carry shivered. He didn't mean to turn his face towards the touch, he was just... He closed his eyes, allowing himself a moment of relief from the constant ache of not touching him. “We need to get ready for afternoon practice,” he reminded them both and his voice came out raspy and used.

It felt like he was cutting his own heart out of his chest but he pulled back until Keenan's fingers fell away.

He got to his feet stiffly but without stumbling and turned towards the shower without looking back—knowing he'd not have the strength to turn away twice.

 


End file.
